Every McCoy in the world is named after a fire. The Gaelic personal name behind the surname is Aodh, an old word meaning fire, and before it was ever a man's name it belonged to a pagan god.
Two very different families carried that word forward. One held the far north of Scotland for five centuries. The other lived in cabins along a creek in Appalachia and became the most famous feuding family in American history. The link between them is real but far looser than the internet suggests, and this piece keeps the two apart.
What Does McCoy Mean?
The Oxford-backed Dictionary of American Family Names gives McCoy as an anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Aodha, son of Aodh, and puts McGee, McKay and McKee under the same root. Aodh was a name for kings and saints, and it survives in modern Irish and Scottish Gaelic as the equivalent of Hugh, which is why some McCoy lines quietly turn into Hughes in nineteenth-century records.
The spelling is the crucial part. Mac Aodha can be written McCoy, McKay, MacKay, McKee, McGee, McCay, McKoy or McQuay depending on which century, which country and which clerk. None of these is the correct one. Our note on Mc against Mac covers the same trap on the prefix.
How Is McCoy Connected to Clan Mackay?
Clan Mackay is Clann Mhic Aoidh in Gaelic, the same three syllables. Its chiefs held Strathnaver, the far northwest of Sutherland, across the parishes of Farr, Tongue, Durness and Eddrachillis, and by the seventeenth century into Reay in Caithness. Iye Mackay, the first chief, was born about 1210.
This is a clan with a real military record. In 1626 Sir Donald Mackay sailed from Cromarty with 3,000 men to fight for the king of Denmark in the Thirty Years War. He was knighted in 1616, made a baronet in 1627 and raised to the peerage as Lord Reay in 1628, and died in exile in Denmark in 1649. The Reay estate was finally sold to the Countess of Sutherland in 1829 by the seventh Lord Reay.
So does a McCoy belong to Clan Mackay? Honestly: the names share a root, and a great many sept lists print McCoy under Mackay for that reason. What they record is a linguistic relationship, not a proved descent. Wikipedia's account of the clan lists no septs at all. Our A to Z of sept names explains what those lists are worth.
Was McCoy Ever a Common Name in Scotland?
No, and this surprises people. In the 1901 census of Scotland there were 138 McCoys, ranking the spelling 2,701st. Mackay in the same index had 26,098 bearers and ranked 14th, behind only names like Smith at the very top.
Ireland tells a different story again: 1,689 McCoys in 1901, ranked 512th, and two thirds of them Catholic. That is not the profile of a transplanted Lowland Protestant name. It points to a native Irish Mac Aodha stock in Ulster and the north midlands, reinforced by Scottish arrivals rather than created by them. The full Irish picture, including the Armagh and Monaghan heartland, sits in our McCoy of Ireland article.
The honest summary: McCoy is a Gaelic name that became American. It is rare in Scotland, moderately common in Ireland, and everywhere in the United States.
Were the Hatfield and McCoy Families Scottish?
Broadly yes, specifically unproven, and the distinction matters.
The Tug Fork McCoys were Ulster-Scots backcountry settlers of the type traced in our account of the road from Ulster to Appalachia. Randolph McCoy, born 30 October 1825 and dead at Pikeville on 28 March 1914, descended from an "Old" William McCoy, 1751 to 1822, with earlier family in Montgomery County, Virginia. Reference works describe the family as of Scottish descent. What nobody has produced is a documented line from any of them back to a named parish in Scotland. Anyone selling you a Strathnaver connection for the feud McCoys is guessing.
What Actually Happened in the Hatfield-McCoy Feud?
It ran from 30 August 1863 to a declared end on 7 May 1891, along the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River. The McCoys were mostly on the Kentucky side in Pike County, the Hatfields on the West Virginia side in what is now Mingo County. Randolph McCoy led one family; William Anderson Hatfield, called Devil Anse, led the other.
The trigger is usually given as the Civil War. Asa Harmon McCoy, who had served in the Union army, was killed on 7 January 1865, thirteen days after mustering out, and McCoy tradition blamed Jim Vance, Devil Anse's uncle. A disputed hog in 1878 was decided for the Hatfields. In 1882, on an election day, three McCoy brothers fought and fatally stabbed Ellison Hatfield; taken from the constables by Devil Anse's men, all three were tied to pawpaw bushes and shot. On New Year's night in 1888 Hatfield men surrounded and burned the McCoy cabin, killing Calvin and Alifair McCoy and beating their mother Sarah.
The law then did its work. A dispute over how Hatfield men had been seized across the state line reached the United States Supreme Court as Mahon v. Justice in 1888, decided seven to two. Eight men were convicted; seven were imprisoned for life, and Ellison Mounts was hanged in 1890, the last execution ever carried out in Pike County. More than a dozen people died between 1880 and 1891. It was not folklore. It was a slow local catastrophe.
Does "The Real McCoy" Come From This Family?
Almost certainly not, and the question is genuinely disputed. The earliest attestation is Scottish, not American: a Glasgow poem of 1856 offering "a drappie o' the real MacKay", with Robert Louis Stevenson writing "He's the real Mackay" in a letter of 1883. Rival claims attach to the inventor Elijah McCoy, to the Prohibition rum-runner William McCoy, and to the boxer Kid McCoy. We set the arguments out in full in the Irish McCoy article rather than repeat them here.
How Should a McCoy Line Be Traced?
- Search McCoy, MacCoy, McKay, Mackay, McKee, McGee, McCay and Hughes as a single group. In American records they interchange freely.
- Establish the American footing first: county deeds, militia rolls and the passenger records described in our guide to passenger lists. Most McCoy trees break at the Atlantic, not before it.
- For an Ulster line, use Presbyterian and Catholic parish registers together, since this name sits on both sides.
- Only then try Scotland, and expect Mackay rather than McCoy. Our ScotlandsPeople guide shows where to look.
Own a Piece of McCoy Heritage
A name built on the Gaelic word for fire has earned something warmer than a framed certificate. The McCoy range covers a mug, a garden flag and a framed keepsake ornament on the Scottish side, and a woven blanket among the Irish designs, all carrying the family crest over a tartan background. Since no sett is recorded to the McCoy spelling, that cloth is a heritage design chosen for the name rather than a pattern any chief assigned to it. Our explainer on who may wear which tartan sets out the real conventions.
Frequently Asked Questions About the McCoy Name
Is McCoy Scottish or Irish?
The Gaelic root is shared. As a spelling it is far more Irish and American than Scottish: 1,689 McCoys in Ireland in 1901 against 138 in Scotland.
Is McCoy a sept of Clan Mackay?
Many sept lists say so, because both names come from Mac Aodha. That is a shared word, not a proved line of descent, and the clan's own published history names no septs.
Were the feuding McCoys descended from Clan Mackay?
There is no documented line. They were Ulster-Scots settlers whose Scottish parish of origin has never been identified in the record.
Sources and Further Reading
- Dictionary of American Family Names: McCoy — Mac Aodha, the fire meaning, and the McGee, McKay and McKee equivalents.
- McCoy in the 1901 Scottish census — 138 bearers, ranked 2,701st.
- Mackay in the same index — 26,098 bearers, ranked 14th, for the contrast.
- McCoy in the 1901 Irish census — 1,689 bearers, ranked 512th, 66 percent Catholic.
- Clan Mackay — Strathnaver, Iye Mackay, Lord Reay and the 1829 sale of the estate.
- The Hatfield-McCoy feud — the dated sequence from 1863 to 1891 and the trials.
- Randolph McCoy — his dates, his parents, and the Virginia background of the family.
- Mahon v. Justice, 127 U.S. 700 (1888) — the interstate seizure question in full text.
- The real McCoy — the 1856 Glasgow poem and the competing American claims.
- George F. Black, The Surnames of Scotland — the reference for early MacCoy and MacKay forms.
Fire, a Sutherland chiefdom and a creek in Kentucky all sit inside four letters, among over 2,000 family names on the site.