---
title: 'How do you say “Machen”?'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2020-11-17
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2020-how-do-you-say-machen
---

# How do you say “Machen”?

Having recently added more published authors from the **Machen** family — parents of the famous [**John Gresham Machen**](/authors/j-gresham-machen) — it seems fitting to introduce them to our readers by way of this extract on how to pronounce that intriguing last name. Charles E. Funk (of the family which owned Funk & Wagnall) published *What’s the Name, Please?* (1938), which is a handy little guide to such matters, and it includes **Machen**.

![](https://assets.confessional.org/images/charles-earle-funk-whats-the-name-please.jpg)Funk writes:

**Machen**, Arthur — author — “My name (of Scottish origin) is pronounced ***mack’en*** to rime with ***blacken***. Maytshen, mayken, masken are incorrect.” But see the next entry.

J. Gresham — Philadelphia clergyman — “The first syllable is pronounced like ***May***, the name of the month. In the second syllable the ***ch*** is as in ***chin***, with ***e*** as in ***pen*: *may’chen***. In ***Gresham***, the ***h*** is silent: ***gres’am***.”

Thus, we have a good idea how the father ([**Arthur W. Machen**](/authors/arthur-webster-machen-sr)) and the son ([**J.G. Machen**](/authors/j-gresham-machen)) (who was also known as “Das”) pronounced their names. One thing to know about Arthur’s wife, [**Mary Jones Gresham Machen**](/authors/mary-jones-gresham-machen), is that her nickname was “Minnie.”

Get to know more about and by the **Machens** here at Log College Press (several biographies of the son are available at our [Secondary Sources page](/tags/secondary-source)), and learn how one family had a profound impact on American Presbyterianism.