MEANING & HISTORY
What does Mac mean?
Mac is a personal-name form related to Mack and to surnames beginning Mac or Mc. The older Gaelic word means son, confirmed by the Old Irish dictionary entry for macc.
The editorial account explains the transfer from shortened Irish and Scottish surnames. That history is more specific than claiming Mac is necessarily short for one particular modern name. Mac can stand independently, and its presence in a Philippine record does not establish Gaelic ancestry or identify a particular father-son relationship.
Pronunciation & syllables
Dictionary readings are kept by language. Select the reading that matches your intended pronunciation. Dots show the source’s written divisions; they are not a universal syllable count across languages.
Wiktionary contributors / Kaikki / Wiktextract · CC BY-SA 4.0
Origin and name formation
Language-specific accounts from the dictionary. A shared spelling can have more than one history.
EnglishEtymology & source
See macc for details.
A diminutive of the male given name Max.
Adapted from Wiktionary contributors via Kaikki/Wiktextract. Source accounts remain in their original English; editorial summaries and filters are adapted. Attribution and downloads
People with the name Mac
Public figures and other documented namesakes linked by an explicit given-name claim. This is a selection of records, not a popularity ranking.
DOCUMENTED NAMESAKE
Mac Baracael
basketball player
DOCUMENTED NAMESAKE
Taylor Sheesh
Filipino drag queen
The record establishes the name association, not the person’s intended meaning, pronunciation or ancestry. Descriptions are attributed to Wikidata contributors (CC0).
Use in Philippine-linked records
Wikidata
2
distinct person records with an explicit given-name claim
Community-edited coverage, not a census or birth registry. Examples: Mac Baracael, Taylor Sheesh
PSA · OFFICIAL BIRTH RECORDS
Mac in the birth records
Exact spelling and stated year in the published name tables. Read the counts as individual snapshots.
Tables included: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024. The 2016 fact sheet lists five names per sex; the later tables include ten. Missing counts are not inferred. Sex categories follow the official tables, independently of dictionary gender labels. Explore the official tables →
Similar names to Mac
Names with a similar opening or ending, ordered by spelling distance. Similar spelling does not imply the same meaning or origin.
Names in this collection
- Macy·Surname from the French place name Massy
- Mae♀Variant of May, the month-name or familiar form
- Maj♀Short form of Maja
- Mar♂Sea in a Spanish devotional name; a separate Danish form exists
- Marc♂French, Catalan, or Welsh form of Marcus
- Max♂♀Short form of Maximilian or Maxwell
- May♀Month-name, or a familiar form of longer names
- Maan♀Tagalog familiar compound-name form; Dutch Herman form also exists
What rhymes with Mac?
No dictionary-confirmed rhyme match is available for this spelling in the current catalogue.
Names with a similar written ending
Spelling suggestions; these are not verified phonetic rhymes.
Recorded combinations with Mac
2 source-reported compound forms include this name as a component. Each part keeps its own history.
Names in this collection
Explore combinations →Explore Mac further
Follow the sources
- Wikidata given-name item Q19901550 — Mac (opens in a new tab)
Given-name identity, native labels, language associations and explicit class where present; not lexical meaning or population frequency.
- Wikidata — Mac Baracael (opens in a new tab)
Explicit given-name claim P735 linking to Q19901550 and citizenship claim P27 linking to Philippines Q928; community-edited evidence, not a civil-registry record.
- Wikidata — Taylor Sheesh (opens in a new tab)
Explicit given-name claim P735 linking to Q19901550 and citizenship claim P27 linking to Philippines Q928; community-edited evidence, not a civil-registry record.
- Wiktionary contributors — Mac (English) (opens in a new tab)
Language-specific given-name etymology; shared spelling does not prove every bearer has this origin.
- Behind the Name — mac (opens in a new tab)
Consulted editorial entry, not user submissions: Variant of Mack.
- Behind the Name — mack-1 (opens in a new tab)
Consulted editorial entry, not user submissions: Shortened Irish/Scottish Mac/Mc surname formation.
- Wiktionary contributors — macc#Old_Irish (opens in a new tab)
Old Irish son/child lexical source.