Mac Maoláin Mac Maoláin Mac Maoláin Gaelic-Irish surname. Mac Maoláin was a surname borne by a number of unrelated families in Gaelic Ireland, anciently found in Breifne, Mide, Brega, Connacht and Ulster. Now anglicized MacMullan, MacMullen, MacMoylan, McMullen, McMullan, McMellon, and McMullin, this name finds its origins as the collateral form of the root forenames: Maelan (pronounced Moylan); Maolain (pronounced Mullan) and Meallain (pronounced Mellan). The Irish form Mac (pronounced Mec=son of) Maoláin evolved primarily in the provinces of Connacht, Leinster and also in Ulster, where the influx of Scot Irish McMillan who adopted the Irish form McMullen makes separation of the
Mac and Mc together example has been taken as representative of a possible paradigm. A book on filing rules from 1918 gives an example showing Mc and M' treated as abbreviations, i.e. for Mac, and ordered as if in the expanded version; and a similar book from 1922 makes the rule one of a number that apply also to St. (Saint) and Mrs. (Mistress). A 1938 book that is a comparative study of cataloguing in various British libraries regarded Mac + Mc + M' sorting as an example of achieved "standardisation" in alphabetisation. It gave further examples where, it argued, such standardisation would be