McDaniel Irish Surname: History, Origins & Heritage of an Antrim Family

August 25, 2026

McDaniel Irish family crest woven blanket in the Irish national tartan

Open the Griffith's Valuation books for the parishes along the Antrim coast, printed county by county across Ireland between 1848 and 1864, and one surname turns up spelled several different ways within a few pages of the same townland index: McDonnell, M'Donald, McConnell, and, less often but unmistakably, McDaniel. A clerk working through a townland in the 1850s did not have a standard spelling to check against. He wrote down what a tenant told him, in English letters, as best he could render it. All four of those spellings, and a handful of others besides, are the same Irish surname passing through different hands and different ears.

Quick answer: McDaniel is an anglicized spelling of the Gaelic Mac Domhnaill, "son of Domhnall," the same root that produced McDonnell and MacDonald. In Ireland it is documented chiefly among the Ulster families descended from the Scottish Clan Donald settlers of County Antrim, with smaller, separate septs recorded in Fermanagh and County Clare. In the United States today the spelling McDaniel is extremely common and is carried by families of several different backgrounds, not all of them Irish, so the Gaelic strand is one real thread among others rather than the only one.

What Does the Surname McDaniel Mean?

The Irish surnames scholar Rev. Patrick Woulfe, in his 1923 reference work "Irish Names and Surnames," records Mac Domhnaill as meaning simply "son of Domhnall." Domhnall is an old Irish personal name built from elements usually translated as "world" and "rule" or "might," so the surname originally marked a man as the son of a chief or ruler rather than an ordinary tenant. Woulfe lists the anglicized forms of Mac Domhnaill as including "M'Donaill, M'Donall, MacDonald, MacDonnell, MacDaniel, Donaldson," among others. The personal name Domhnall itself was rendered into English in two different ways over the centuries, sometimes as Donald and sometimes as Daniel, which is the direct reason McDaniel exists as a legitimate spelling of the name alongside McDonnell and McDonald.

Where in Ulster Does the McDaniel Name Come From?

Woulfe identifies three separate families that carried the Mac Domhnaill surname in Ireland, and they are not all the same lineage. By far the best documented is the Ulster branch descended from the Scottish Clan Donald of the Isles. A member of that family, John Mor MacDonald, married into the Bissett lords of the Antrim glens in the fifteenth century, and his descendants held land there on and off for the next hundred years. In 1558, Somhairle Buidhe MacDonnell, known in English as Sorley Boy MacDonnell, secured the lordship of the glens outright, and his line went on to become the Earls of Antrim. Their surname is recorded predominantly as McDonnell in Ireland, though Woulfe notes that McConnell is simply the same name spoken with the Gaelic pronunciation retained. Two further, unrelated septs also used the surname: a family that served as chiefs in County Fermanagh under the name MacDonnell of Clan-Kelly, and a branch descended from the O'Brien kings of Thomond in County Clare. All three groups anglicized the same underlying Irish name, which is part of why McDaniel families researching their roots can trace to more than one part of the country.

How Is McDaniel Related to McDonnell and MacDonald?

McDaniel, McDonnell, and MacDonald are not three different surnames that happen to sound alike. They are the same Irish and Scots-Gaelic name, Mac Domhnaill, written down at different times by different clerks who anglicized the personal name Domhnall in different ways. A single family could appear as McDonnell in one parish register and McDaniel in a townland list twenty years later without any change in ancestry. This is common in Irish record-keeping generally, since spelling was not standardized until well into the twentieth century, but it is especially visible with Mac Domhnaill because Domhnall had two accepted English equivalents rather than one.

Families researching the McDaniel line often want something in hand that reflects that Ulster history rather than a guess at a coat design. A McDaniel woven throw pairs the family name with the Irish national tartan for everyday use around the house. A McDaniel heritage mug works as a smaller, everyday way to keep the name visible. For marking a porch or a front yard, a McDaniel garden flag puts the name outdoors where visitors see it first.

For a single page showing everything we make for this surname, the McDaniel Irish Family Gifts & Heritage collects every current McDaniel design in one place and updates as new ones are added.

Why Are There So Many Spellings of the Name?

Between the seventeenth and early twentieth centuries, Irish surnames moved from Gaelic manuscript spelling into English-language civil and church records with no consistent system for the transition. Valuation clerks, census enumerators, and parish priests each made their own choices, and a family's name could shift from one document to the next depending on who was writing it down and how the name was pronounced locally. Woulfe's list for Mac Domhnaill alone includes M'Donaill, M'Donall, MacDonald, MacDonnell, MacDaniel, and Donaldson, and a closely related form, Mac Dhomhnaill, produced McConnell, MacConnell, and McGonnell in areas where the Gaelic "d" sound was retained in speech. McDaniel sits within that same cluster rather than standing apart from it.

Why Does McDaniel Look Like It Means "Son of Daniel"?

This is the detail specific to the McDaniel spelling rather than to McDonnell or MacDonald generally. In English, "Daniel" is a biblical name with no connection to Irish Domhnall. But Irish clerks and scribes anglicizing Domhnall over the centuries settled on two different English names as equivalents: Donald, which produced McDonnell and MacDonald, and Daniel, which produced McDaniel. The resemblance to the Hebrew name Daniel is a coincidence of English spelling, not a change in ancestry or a separate origin. A McDaniel family and a McDonnell family with the same Ulster background share the identical Gaelic surname; only the English rendering of the middle syllable differs.

Where Do McDaniels Live Today?

McDaniel is one of the more common Mc- surnames in the United States, far more common there than in Ireland itself, and that popularity has more than one explanation. Some American McDaniel families descend directly from Ulster emigrants who carried the Mac Domhnaill spelling variant across the Atlantic during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, settling first in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas before moving further south and west. Other American McDaniel families, particularly many African-American families, trace their surname to a different history entirely: the practice, common before and after emancipation, of taking or keeping a surname already established in the local community rather than one passed down from an Irish ancestor. Both histories are real and both are common. This article follows the documented Irish-Gaelic strand of the name, rooted in Mac Domhnaill and the Ulster MacDonnell families, which is one real thread among the several that the modern spelling McDaniel now carries.

Frequently Asked Questions About the McDaniel Name

Is McDaniel an Irish or a Scottish name?

Both, in the sense that the underlying name Mac Domhnaill originated as a Gaelic name shared across Ireland and Scotland. The specific McDaniel spelling is documented as an Irish anglicization, and the Ulster branch of the family that used it most descends from Scottish settlers who established themselves in County Antrim from the fifteenth century onward, so the name carries a genuinely mixed Irish-Scottish history rather than belonging cleanly to one country.

What does McDaniel mean in Gaelic?

It comes from Mac Domhnaill, "son of Domhnall," an old personal name built from elements meaning roughly "world" and "rule" or "might." It does not derive from the biblical name Daniel, despite the resemblance in modern English spelling.

Is McDaniel the same surname as McDonnell?

Yes. Both are anglicized spellings of the same Gaelic surname, Mac Domhnaill, arrived at because the personal name Domhnall was rendered into English as either Donald or Daniel depending on the clerk, the parish, and the era.

Why do some McDaniel families have no Irish ancestry at all?

Because the spelling is common in the United States for reasons beyond Irish immigration. A significant number of American McDaniel families, including many African-American families, trace the name to surnames adopted or retained in the American South before and after emancipation, a history unrelated to Ulster or to Mac Domhnaill.

What part of Ireland is most associated with the McDaniel name?

The best-documented Irish sept using Mac Domhnaill and its anglicized forms is the Ulster family centered on County Antrim, descended from the Scottish Clan Donald and established in the Glens of Antrim by the sixteenth century. Woulfe also records separate, smaller Mac Domhnaill families in County Fermanagh and County Clare, so Antrim is the strongest single association without being the only one.