I am currently learning about networking. I am going through the TCP IP and OSI model and try to pick apart what protocol belongs to which layer. I am a bit confused over Media Access Control. Does it just refer to the hardware id of the network card or is it the name of the protocol responsible for it? I tried to find any RFCs for MAC on IETF to provide some definitions for me, but I couldn't find anything.
"MAC" stands for media access control - it's a sublayer of the data link layer (L2) in the OSI model.
One of the most popular protocols in this layer is Ethernet which covers the physical layer and the data link layer. You can find all about Ethernet at IEEE 802.3 (requires registration but is free).
Another extremely popular L1/L2 protocol stack is WiFi (IEEE 802.11) but that's a lot more complicated and hard to start with.