A surname-style Gaelic name likely meaning son of Aodh, with Aodh linked to fire.
Macoy carries the DNA of the old Gaelic-Scottish surname MacAodha — 'son of Aodh,' where Aodh was an ancient fire deity, the root of names like Hugh and Aidan. The McCoy clan settled across Ireland and Scotland before waves of emigration carried the name to the Americas. The family became so associated with genuine authenticity that 'the real McCoy' entered English as a phrase meaning the authentic article — though historians debate whether the expression originated with Elijah McCoy, the Black Canadian-American inventor whose superior machine lubricators were specifically requested over imitations, or with a Scottish whisky brand, or with the boxer Norman Selby who fought under the name Kid McCoy.
The respelling as Macoy strips the clan prefix and gives the name a cleaner, more given-name feel. It sits in the tradition of surnames-as-first-names that has been a strong current in American naming since the eighteenth century — names that carry clan and family identity forward into the first-name slot. The variant spelling softens the hard genealogical specificity of McCoy while retaining all its phonetic character.
Macoy today reads as confident and slightly roguish — the kind of name that appears in adventure stories and frontier narratives. It is short enough to never feel burdensome and distinctive enough that a child will rarely share it with a classmate. The embedded phrase 'the real McCoy' means the name carries, just beneath the surface, a permanent association with authenticity and legitimacy.