At 11:02:58 AM on Sunday, September 14, 2008, Andrew
Jarrette wrote:
[...]
> P.S. to Rick: what I do know about the McMillans (and I
> don't know why some spell it MacMillan, and whether they
> are related (cf. Harold MacMillan, former PM of Great
> Britain)
<MacMillan>, <Macmillan>, <McMillan>, <M'Millan>, etc. are
all the same name and can all appear in a single family.
> is that their name is from <mac maolain> which means "son
> of the priest".
Not quite: English <Macmillan> actually represents two Scots
Gaelic names, <mac Mhaolain> and <mac Ghille Mhaoil>. The
first is 'son of Maolan'; <Maolan> corresponds to Irish
<Maolán> and is a diminutive of <Maol> 'bald, tonsured', Old
Irish <Máel> 'crop-headed, shorn' (and by extension 'bald'),
and the whole is 'son of the bald or tonsured one'.
The second is 'son of Gille Maol'; <Gille Maol> corresponds
to Irish <Giolla Maol> 'bald or tonsured lad' (OIr <gilla
máel>), making the whole 'son of the bald or tonsured lad'.
(Another interpretation is grammatically possible but I
think much less likely.)
> Campbell so strongly suggests <campobellum>, as though it
> were a Roman name meaning "battlefield", but perhaps it's
> more something like "cambail" or another Irish word of
> some sort?
Sc. Gael. <camb(h)eul> 'wry-mouth, crooked mouth', from
<cam> 'crooked, awry, distorted, bent' and <beul> 'mouth'.
Brian