Mc is a surname originally from Scotland. Since they are all immigrants in the United States, their ancestors probably did not use English before using English. In the United States, an English-speaking society, you must spell out your last name in English. Therefore, there are many weird surnames in the United States.
Mcxxxxx is a very special category. For example, the well-known McDonald's and McCain are all originally local surnames in Scotland. Because English originates from the ancient Anglo-Saxon language, and the Anglo-Saxons all immigrated from Germany. So the predecessor of English is essentially German. And if you have studied German, you know that almost all words in German have three spellings. When the ancient Scots' own language was integrated into Old English, they also added some elements of their own. The Mc series of surnames has become the best sign that they are of Scottish descent.
Those with son\sen in their names are often of Nordic origin, but this is not always the case. Because when they immigrated to the British Empire and changed their names, many people chose to add son after their surnames, that is, the son of xxx. Or add the son of xxx after the existing English name.
The names are various professions or two words spelled together, such as smith or firestone. Many of them originate from France and Germany. Of course, this is not absolute. Because of French, I like to use my profession as my surname, and I also like to put two characters together as a surname. There are many surnames that use two German characters combined together~~
I don’t need to mention the ones ending in “Ski” or “Vic”. All from Eastern Europe.
Africans are more complicated. For many African Americans, the original names of their ancestors have been forgotten. Because when black slaves came to the United States, they were not allowed to have surnames at all. And their names were all given by slave owners for the sake of being blind. And the surnames of these slaves also took the surnames of their slave owners. For example, the famous black movie star Will Smith, whose ancestors were slaves, uses the surname of the slave owner. People like Obama who came to the United States with their original African surnames are in the minority. Obama is not a common figure in America. Maybe Obama’s father is from Kenya, and his surname is this~~
Spanish and Portuguese artists all have very long surnames. Anyway, as long as they have more than 5 syllables, they are either Greek People are either Spanish or Portuguese.
Asian people are more complicated. Japanese names are most recognizable. Japanese surnames all end in a string of monosyllables a, i, u, e, and o. For example, yamazaki is called Yamazaki, and sakamodu is called version...
There are only a few Koreans who have reversed surnames. If you remember them, you will know them all, such as Kim Kim, Lee Lee, and Chen Chang in Korea. , Cai Choi, etc.
All non-mainland Chinese use the Chinese pinyin formulated during the Republic of China, so it is different from the Chinese pinyin in the mainland. For example, all B sounds are pronounced as P, and all Q sounds are pronounced as TS. The deep nasal sounds ong, ing, and eng are often spelled differently from those in mainland China. I don’t know the specifics. For example, John Woo, the great master of international film martial arts design, uses Hoo
But most Chinese in mainland China only use Hanyu Pinyin. However, if the pronunciation of some surnames matches existing English surnames, some people may directly write their gender as that when writing their own names. For example, people with the surname Li are often written as Lee, and people with the surname Yang are often written as Young
Finally, there is one thing to remember. The variety of American surnames comes from the various ancestral places of their immigrants~~So, if someone tells you how to spell their name, try not to spell it wrong~~Details like McCain, where M and C must be capitalized , try to keep the original appearance as much as possible.