An Scottish surname, McPherson comes from the Gaelic term ‘phearsoin’ which refers to a parson. The added ‘mc’ means the son. The spelling variations for McPherson include MacPhersone and MacPherson. In England the greater concentration of the McPherson surname is in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Durham, Cumberland, and south in the city of London, in Middlesex and Kent counties. In Scotland the original location for the McPherson clans was in Inverness. The McPherson families spread to Aberdeenshire and Argyll counties. Many McPherson families left Scotland for the Canada, United States, New Zealand and Australia. Those who moved to Ireland settled in Northern Ireland. Within the United States the early McPherson families settled in South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New York, Alabama, Ohio and Kentucky. Famous: James Alan McPherson (novelist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction), Dallas McPherson (professional baseball player), James Birdseye McPherson (Civil War Union Army Major General killed in 1864 and became highest ranking general killed during the course of the war), Adrian McPherson (professional football player), Gordon McPherson (music composer from Scotland), Aimee Semple McPherson (famous evangelist of the 1920s and 1930s) and Neil McPherson (theater director in England).