NCIS

[quizzywig]

Watching the new series last night (Wednesday's episode) and the British bloke (ha! New Zealand more like) Major Malloy was being introduced to the gang and when he met Tim, he said something like "Irish, but I won't hold that against you". Now I thought McGee was a Scottish name as it began with Mac or Mc. Am I right?

[bednobs]

clearly not, if he said he was irish!
we have an irish pub near us call fin mccoull's spelt something like that)

[starone]

What programme is it on quiz? I really like NCIS but hadn't realised there was a new series.

[quizzywig]

On Channel 5, I think it started about three weeks ago. My favourite US series.
Silly me about the Irish thing!

[vulcan]

The following is from a "tracing your Scottish ancestors" web site.

The prefix "Mac" means "son of" in Gaelic. Until the 16th Century, individuals in Gaelic-speaking Scotland were given only one name and thus were referred to as Duncan, son of Donald. It was only later that this convention was used to form a formal surname. Mac is variously rendered as Mc or M'. The suggestion that names beginning "Mc" are Irish and "Mac" are Scottish is wrong. Within Gaelic, "Nic" is the female equivalent of "Mac", that is "daughter of". Thus a female's surname with the surname MacGovan, will appear in Gaelic as Nic Ghobhain, not Mac Ghobhain. However, Nic never appears in the anglicised version of a surname.

It looks as if Mac and it's variants can be Scottish or Irish.

[vulcan]

Tim was introduced as McGee, he didn't say he was Irish, malloy assumed he was. The programme is still on demand 5.

[quizzywig]

Thank you vulcan. I assumed in my ignorance that Mc and Mac meant Scottish and O' were Irish. I appreciate your input.

[Flyhalf]

Isn't the addition of Timothy more of a pointer to Irishness?

[Flyhalf]

Further thought: wasn't he being rather ironic, given his own name (Peter Malloy)?

[quizzywig]

Could be BIGJACK, that hadn't occurred to me. I must concentrate more and stop looking at Gibbs all the time!

[bednobs]

why would you want to stop looking at gibbs????? Mad fool!

[quizzywig]

You are so right bednobs.

[SeaJayPea]

At risk of upsetting all the Mark Harmon fans out there, I have to admit to watching this avidly. But only because it is so terrible it's funny, in the same way that Prisoner - Cell Block H became compulsive viewing 20-odd years ago.

<<sits back and waits for abuse>>

[daffy654]

I have to say that it was one of the cheesiest episode of NCIS ever! They should have asked David McCallum for pointers on Britishness because they got it so wrong.