Is Mackdonald the same as Macdonald?

[Boreades]

Working on a Macdonald name study, I found that there a large number of "Mackdonald"s in the census records in England, especially in London. I'd assumed it was a mistake by English census recorders.

But then I discovered this website in Ireland
https://www.mackdonald.com/

Which has got me wondering again - was there ever a real branch of the Clan Donald that used the "mack" instead of "mac"? - and was it mainly in Ireland?

All suggestions welcome!

[GrahamSimons]

As a rule of thumb,  in the 19th century or before,  expect no standardisation at all. So McD, MacD, M'D, MackD are likely to show up anywhere. And Donald or Donal or any other wobbly spelling.
I'm working on a transcription project at the moment and the variety of spellings is endless. 
With much higher literacy rates in the 20th century there is rather more consistency.
And yes, I'm aware that this doesn't help!

[Andrew C.]

If you put Mackdonald in as a search on Irish Genealogy there are only four results. I am guessing it is a miss spelling. On the same page there are Mc names so It looks like whoever was registering sounded it as Mac(k)

[Elwyn Soutter]

The idea of a single or correct spelling for a surname is very much a recent phenomenon designed to meet the needs of modern officialdom. Before that there was no consistency. Names were spelled phonetically and each variation was down to the whim of the particular person recording the information. You will often see the spelling change as the records go back. This rarely indicates a deliberate decision to alter the name, nor even a mistake. Not everyone was literate, but even when they were, exact and consistent spelling simply wasn’t something they bothered about.

In 1899, the Rev Smith reviewed the early records of Antrim 1st Presbyterian church (covering the years 1674 to c 1736). He noted: “Even the same word is not always spelled alike by the same hand. Indeed spelling with most of the recording officials (and they must have been fairly numerous) was a matter of the most sublime indifference. The name William, for instance, is spelled 3 different ways in as many lines; while Donegore, a neighbouring parish, is spelled 10 different ways; but these extend over a good number of years. Many families names are spelled phonetically, while others are given in the most round-about fashion.”

Recording names in Scotland was just the same as in Ireland. So expect spelling to vary. That was the norm.

[Forfarian]

The short answer is yes, they are the same.

Don't get hung up on spelling. There may be some families who preferred one spelling rather than another, but it wasn't always the family who wrote things down, and the clerks who did the writing sometimes had strange ideas.

Even in the present day, when literacy is almost universal among the circles in which I move, it astonishes me how many people, having only ever seen my very plain short given name in e-mails or letters or other written forms, still manage to misspell it.

There are, I believe, 53 recorded ways of spelling the surname Taylor, so it's hardly surprising that there are umpteen ways of spelling M(a)cdonald.