Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from a place in Lancashire, named with an ancient British river name, perhaps meaning ‘sacred’, ‘holy’.
- Irish : when not of English origin (see 1 above), a rare reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Seanchaidhe ‘son of the chronicler’, a name found in Sligo and Leitrim, which is more commonly Anglicized as Fox, as the result of an erroneous association with sionnach ‘fox’.