Having a bit of a dilemma over here. We want to use a family surname (MacAbee) for our son’s middle name. It seems nitpicky, perhaps, but neither of us is crazy about the capitalization of the A. In our family, MacAbee has always been pronounced [name_m]MACK[/name_m]-uh-bee, not mack-AY-bee. So we were planning to use Macabee as the middle, since people pronounce MacAbee wrong a lot. We just like the way it looked too. However, we don’t really want people to think we just misspelled the traditional Hebrew name (not that we are Jewish or super religious) Maccabee.
I imagine MacAbee is not of Hebrew origin (Scots-Irish more likely), but it is identical in pronunciation to the Hebrew name Maccabee (from the Old Testament).
i see. so they’re two different names but identical in pronunciation.
i think Macabee or Maccabee both work for that. whether or not you want to add the second c i guess depends on whether or not you think it would change the family name into the (unrelated, i assume) Hebrew name. but i think both would be pronounced the way you’d want it, so it’s not necessary to add the c.
I would keep the family spelling of MacAbee. Changing the spelling takes away from the meaning in my opinion. It also makes MacAbee a completely different name…