Facts and traditions collected for a family record

1 28 FACTS AND TRADITIONS.
It may strike the reader as singular that the name M'Connell should
be so variously written. In the parish records, the method of spelling
the word is rather vague. It is generally either M Connell or M'ConneL
The incorrect spelling in the last century, in the parish and other
records, is easily accounted for by the fact that the parties themselves
being generally rather illiterate, the writing was left to the registrar or
session-clerk, who wrote it as he considered most correct from the pro-
nunciation given. Parish records at the present day ai*e nowhere
remarkable examples of accurate spelling ; much less would they be so
at a time when the spelling of the English language itself was not
definitively settled by the authority of lexicographers.
In the Appendix, (see Parish of Leswalt,) the registrar, William Main,
states that M'Connell is the way in which the name was always written ;
and as he had ancestors of that name, he had good opportunities of
knowing.
This statement is borne out by our own family record. We have no
record of the manner in which John M'Connell in Beoch wrote his name ;
but his son Samuel (my great-grandfather) always signed M'Connell.
His son John also signs himself M'Connell ; also his son James, and
his daughters Margaret, Janet, and Agnes.
All others of that name in Galloway, Ayrshire, and the North of
Ireland now write M'Connell.
In addition to this testimony, the Gaelic word MacDhomhnuill has
always the LL at the end ; and all the eminent Gaelic scholars of the
present day, whom the writer of these pages has consulted, consider the
name most correct with the final letter double.
It seems that my father and uncles M'Connell changed the name into
M'Connel, for what reason we cannot now ascertain. It may have been
to distinguish their family from others of the same name, not related or
very distantly related. But the most probable reason was, that the Rev.