I just ran across this paragraph in The Gods of Prophetstown, by Adam Jortner (p. 69), concerning the events that led up to the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe:
Numerous legends grew up around the Battle of Fallen Timbers. One American soldier with the unfortunate name of Robert MisCampbell had the greater misfortune to die of his wounds, and over the years historians and folklorists began to report that a "Miss Campbell" had been killed in the action. Andrew Coffinberry extolled the mythical female lieutenant in his 1842 poem The Forest Rangers: "Tears distilled from may an eye, / That saw the beardless hero die. / Wrenching apart the bloody vest, / Lo! They exposed a maiden's breast."
I obviously couldn't just leave that lying there, so I did some Googling. The soldier with this name is corroborated in other sources, and, indeed, others have born the same name all the way up into the 20th century, at least. From what I've found in my quick search, it sounds like our Robert MisCampbell may have actually been a captain of dragoons in the battle who allowed himself and some of his men to be cut off from support, a mistake which cost him and his men their lives.
I have never seen this prefix, and my (admittedly limited) Googling skill has failed to turn up any reference to such a patronymic prefix -- if, indeed, that's what this is. Because of the main element of the name, "Campbell," I'm assuming it must be Scottish in origin.
Is this a Gaelic patronymic prefix that goes along with Mc, Mac, Fitz, and O', or is it something else? Many thanks for any scholarship you feel inclined to lend to this question!
Is this a Gaelic patronymic prefix that goes along with Mc, Mac, Fitz, and O', or is it something else? Many thanks for any scholarship you feel inclined to lend to this question!
Gaelic patronymic conventions are fairly well established, and 'Mis' isn't among them. Mac/Ní mean 'son/daughter of', while the Ua (O') prefix indicates membership of a particular dynasty.
For example, the first O'Neill king to submit to the Tudors was Conn 'Bacach' mac Cuinn Ó Néill - this tells us he was Conn 'the lame', son of Conn, of the dynasty of Niall Glúndubh. Conn's son was Shane Mac Cuinn O'Neill, and his son was Hugh McShane O'Neill, and so on. In more recent centuries, the patronymic names have become fixed: while my own surname takes a patronymic form, it refers to the profession of an unknown medieval or early modern ancestor, not my father's given name (as we see in Icelandic or Russian patronymics.)
'Fitz' appears in Ireland but does not have Gaelic origins. It was a Norman French convention used to acknowledge illegitimate children of the nobility, and is a corruption of the Latin 'filius', meaning 'son'. This convention was the origin of the surname of the hugely prominent FitzGerald dynasty that ruled much of Leinster and Munster.
And nearly 400 years after the Normans brought the Fitz prefix to Ireland, it still had currency in the English nobility. Had Conn Bacach travelled to the court of Henry VIII a few years earlier than he did, he might have met young Henry FitzRoy, whose name indicated his parentage as clearly as his looks ('fitz' meaning son of, 'roy' as in royal.)
'Miscampbell' is not a common name, though presumably it's a variant of Campbell - a Gaelic name that's crossed between Scotland and Ireland many times over the past 1500 years. There are no records I can find of Miscampbell appearing before the 18th century, and it's rare even where it appears in northeast Antrim.
There are two chief possibilities here: the boring option is that it comes from a poor transcription of 'MacCampbell' that was read as Miscampbell, and stuck. The more interesting option is that it's some kind of colloquial nickname (the origin of which may be remembered locally if not online) that was passed on beyond its original bearer - which is entirely plausible in an area that may have needed to distinguish between a number of Campbell households. However, if the 'mis' part is Scottish Gaelic or Irish in origin, it's not a typical prefix.