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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Irish : reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Giolla Bhuidhe ‘descendant of the yellow-haired (buidhe) servant’. This is a Connacht surname, sometimes replaced with Scottish Ogilvie.
  • Irish : adoption of the English habitational name Gilby, from a place in Lincolnshire, so named from the Old Norse personal name Gilli, which is abstracted from the various Irish personal names containing Gaelic giolla ‘servant’ + Old Norse býr ‘farm’, ‘settlement’.

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