Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 20 September 2003

A Lexicographer writes

issue 20 September 2003

My husband, when asked to buy some French beans once, came home with a tin of broad beans produced in France. So I was delighted when he got me a reprint from the Ohio State Law Journal 1964, vol. 25 no. 1, as requested, from the medical school library.

The question was the spelling of Daniel M’Naghten’s name. M’Naghten killed Edward Drummond in 1843 in mistake for Sir Robert Peel. He pleaded insanity and was acquitted, and the unsatisfactory rules on madness and responsibility drawn up after inquiries by the Lord Chancellor now bear his name. But what was his name?

The OED lists McNaghten, MacNaughton, Macnaughton before adding an ‘etc.’ and plumping for M’Naghten. The apostrophe was in the 19th century often reversed, or at least an opening inverted comma was used. But the apostrophe stands for the c in Mc, which is regarded as Mac alphabetically by English abecedarians.

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