Why the word McDonald have a small c in it?

Answer 1

Because it was the last name of the original owner/creator of the restaurant.

Ray Kroc (October 5, 1902 – January 14, 1984) was an American entrepreneur, famous for significantly expanding the McDonald's Corporation from 1955. He did not actually found the restaurant chain itself, however; it was started by Dick and Maurice (Mac) McDonald in 1940.

Answer 2

As a surname McDonald, Mc is a prefix meaning "son of" or "descendant of". You capitalize the first letter of a name, so the D in Donald is capitalized.
a) MDonald is not the way you pronounce it
b) MCDonald looks weird
c) MacDonald is a little more expensive to print, and is not the original name.
d) MikDon'ld looks goofy.

Answer 3

Scottish and Irish patronymic surnames frequently have the prefix Mac or Mc. When these surnames were originally developed, they were formed by adding the Gaelic word mac, which means son of, to the name of the original bearer's father. For example, the surname MacDonald literally means son of Donald. In later times, these prefixes were also added to the occupation or nickname of the bearer's father. For example, MacWard means son of the bard and MacDowell means son of the black stranger.

Numerous variations of this prefix emerged, for a number of reasons. It was rendered Mag before vowels and aspirated consonants. Historical records concerning Irish and Scottish names reveal that the common prefix Mc and the less common prefixes M' and Mcc developed as abbreviations of the original Gaelic prefix Mac. Thus, the popular beliefs that Mc is a distinctively Irish prefix while Mac is exclusively Scottish, and that one prefix is used by Catholic families while the other one is specifically Protestant are erroneous. In actuality, the same person often had his surname recorded using both Mac and Mc on separate occasions.

Answer 4

Look in your phone book under M and look at all the McDonells etc. It's Irish I believe.