Origin of the surname McDonic?
Does anyone know where this surname originated? Was it France? as a recent family contact (Mike) believes.

Mike wrote:--"I had always regarded it as most-probably a (phonetic) re-spelling of McDonaugh or McDonaugh or something similar, but there is a long-standing family story of a french connection, and I have a (late-1920s draughtsman's transcription of a tooled leather 'family crest' that clearly depicts both lion and shield covered with fleurs de Lits... I'm fairly confident thast it was 'manufactured' during the 1800s for either Timothy 'The Elder' or 'Timothy the second McDonic'.... Timothy McDonaugh seems to really appear for the first time in the (Hartlepool) Stockton census of 1861 (The 1841 census records for the area were lost or destroyed)... In the 1861 (and subsequent) census records, he reports his birthplace as variously "Hythe, Kent" or "Seth, Kent"... I can't find any record of Seth as a Kent place name, but Hythe, Kent is about as close as one can get to France... The name on Timothy (the Elder)'s marriage document (I'm told) is "Timothy Macdonet"... There are no even-vaguely similar records that I can find for Hythe, or anywhere else in Kent... It could be that records have simply been lost... It could be that "he" actually oringinated in Ireland (Timothy McDonaugh would have been a perfect proper, extant, Irish name at the time... Or it could be that "he" tacked a "mac" prefix on a perfectly-common French name "Donet" at the time... Indeed, I have found a French birth record for a born-out-of wedlock child (Pere Inconnu) who would almost certainly have been raised "Louis Donet" or "Louis De La Donet", born in the same birth year (1807) that Timothy reported in the census records... It seems to me (whether this Donet or otherwise) that anglicization of "Donet" to "Timothy MacDonet" would be a quite-reasonable change toward 'dropping into' a new country...
Long-and-short, I'm trying to figure out where "McDonic" came from - If you have any insight or suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated"

The family connection between myself and Mike is via the Fernie branch of my husband'x family:-
Samuel Henry McDonic and wife Catherine Fernie, together with their English-born children Henry Reed McDonic (aka Harry) and Helen McDonic (only known as Nellie) moved to Canada in the late 1800's

Glynne