>My gripe, along those lines, is that I've always had to spell out my surname to people, on the phone, in an office, anywhere where they want to record my name. Invariably they've written down the name of those burger wallahs before I've finished, then have to cross out the "a" from "Mac", the "ald" and replace it with "ell", change to capital "D", etc., till in the end they've so spoilt the document that they have to start again.
>
>I'll bet you the vast majority on the UT automatically read it as "Macdonald" (unless they've needed to check it isn't "Thurber" that's posted) :-)

Nah, not here. But I always wonder what happened with your pal Douglas?