Hi, I know this is a long shot but i believe my family left Scotland and moved to Sligo and we were told they dropped the Mc and just became Cormack and i wondered if anyone in Sligo had had any family stories like this and if we were related at all. due to lock down am not able to visit my aunty and dad to find out more information but i will try and see what i can do
Welcome to Ireland Reaching Out!
It is true that in the 19th century some Mc and O prefixes to surnames were dropped and later restored either in Ireland or the new country if someone emigrated. You need to give us more information about your family. The 1858 Griffiths Valuation for Co. Sligo showed that all of the McCormack/McCormack families had the Mc. In the 1901 census for Co. Sligo, all 43 McCormack households had the Mc.
Roger McDonnell
If you are interested in the Mc and O’ prefixes and why they were sometimes dropped, it’s perhaps worth knowing a little bit about Irish (and Scottish) gaelic. The Mc prefix just meant son of. It wasn’t an integral part of the surname and so could be dispensed with. The prefix also changed depending on various factors such as the grammatical case being used and also the sex and marital status of the person being referred to. In Irish, women were Ni or Nic depending on their marital status, not Mc. So to give you a specific example here’s a McCormick family in Co Donegal in the 1911 census. The mother is transcribed as Brighid Ni Cormaic, and her son is Eudhmonn Mac Cormaic. (In English, Brigid and Edward McCormick.). So you can see how the Cormaic element is quite separate from the prefix.
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Donegal/Cloghan/Glashagh_More/507559/
As the names became anglicised people tended to stick with the same version for both sexes and so MacCormick becomes the whole name. But it wasn’t always so. Here’s the same family in the 1901 census, which they completed in English. So you can compare the two.
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Donegal/Cloghan/Glasha…
thank you, My dad has said that his 3 times great grandfather was Patrick Cormack ( Mccormack) i recon this was the early 1800 and his son was Danie ( was a shoe maker as a profesion) l and he married Mary Mulvey and they had a son called James cormack. I know he married a lady called Cathrine Jane Ballantyne and had my dad's grandfather Charlkes F Cormack in edinburgh on the 20/1/1900 . This is all i could get am sorry it is still very limited but that is all we know . Thank you for your help
James Cormack appears to have married Catherine Jane Ballantyne in 1879 (St Andrew parish, Edinburgh) GROS ref 685/2 83. That certificate should give you confirmation of his parents names, and also whether they were alive or dead at that date. If dead, it’ll say (dcd) beside their name. That information may help trace them. (If they died in Scotland, after 1855 their death certificates should give you their parents names. Plus you may be able to trace them in the 1841 & 1851 censuses. And perhaps later, depending on how long they lived. These records are all available on the Scotlandspeople site.
The 1901 census indicates James Cormack was born in Edinburgh and was 45, so born c 1855/6. Have you searched for James and his parents in the 1861 and 1871 censuses?
Scottish birth certificates, for 1855 and 1861 onwards normally record where and when the parents married. So if you can find a birth cert for James or one of his siblings that may help you trace the family back. I had a look for a Daniel Cormack – Mary Mulvey marriage but did not find one. Either in the statutory records 1855 onwards, or in church records pre 1855. But you might find it from one of their childrens birth certificates.