Scottish Tartan Images

Spelling Variations: Pride in one's name is an admirable quality, but truth be told, the written word is only a poor representation of the spoken language. People write down what they hear, which makes spelling vulnerable to the speaker's accent. Many names were changed during immigration, and they are also subject to regional tendencies in spelling.

The sound of the name is more important than the spelling. Shakespeare spelled his own surname over twenty different ways, and who are we to argue with him?

Please be flexible and open-minded when looking for a name. Look at how many different ways you can spell this name: Fraser=Frashier=Frashure=Frasier=Frasuer=Frasuir=Frazar=Frazer=Frazier=Frazure

Mac is the Gaelic for "son" and is a very common element in Scottish and Irish surnames. It is often believed in the U.S. that Mac is Scottish and Mc is Irish, but this is not true. Mc is actually an abbreviation of Mac, and at one time was also written M'.

Philip D. Smith, tartan scholar and historian, says that in an early book on Highland music the author spelled his own family name three different ways on the first two pages: MacDonald, McDonald, and M'Donald.