I was tipped off to a disturbing piece of slander which I felt compelled to address. I can’t find the original (if you know the origin let me know), but there are posts around the internet stating that in Irish Gaelic McCain means “Son of Cain” attempting to tie McCain to that brother-murderer in the bible (1 John 3:12) through some kind of naming-destiny argument too ridiculous to believe. Although I personally dislike McCain for his dirty deals, infidelity, and constant flip-flopping on the issues, I can’t let this one stand.

McCain is an anglicized spelling of the Irish name Mac Uí Catháin (for those of you about to yell that he’s not Irish, he’s Scottish - the Scots are transplanted Irishmen). If you have never heard Gaelic spoken, it is very different from English. It sounds a lot like Hebrew with alot of sounds which English speakers sometimes find difficult to reproduce. Mac *does* mean “son of” (so does the prefix “O”) and “Mc” is just an abbreviation for Mac. The clan McCain (to use the Anglicized spelling) was allied with the O’Neills (again an anglicized spelling) in the Province of Ulster in the north of Ireland. Many of the ruling families hailed from Ulster in ancient Ireland, and these were just two. As the English became entrenched in northern Ireland, they couldn’t pronounce the Gaelic easily and ended up spelling the names in English as closely as they could to what they sounded like to them. The Uí Catháin name was derived from the word Cathan (cath, “a battle”, an, “one who”). So, if it matters at all (and I don’t think it does), McCain’s name literally means “One who battles” which would have been fitting for someone of the ruling class of ancient Ireland. This was discussed on Roots Web in 1999 here (even before the 2000 election