split last names

[justincy]

I have a lot of Scottish names beginning with Mc (McNeill, McMillan, etc.). A lot of genealogists write these names as if they were two names, i.e. Mc Neill. This was the custom back when surnames were written in all caps; people left a space between Mc and Neill to indicate the "c" should be small.

Unfortunately, New FamilySearch sometimes read Mc as a middle name and Neill as the surname. Family Tree's search engine tries to compensate for that, but I'm not convinced it does completely. I've had to correct a couple dozen instances of this.

So the category might be "split surnames". Some appellations which might be frequently split are Mc, Van (as is Van Winkle), Von (is in Von Brohm), O (as in O'Neill), and Fitz (as in Fitz Patrick, which was the French Norman equivalent of Mc and became common in England after the Norman Invasion).