Family name origins & meanings
- Irish (Westmeath) : reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Saoraidhe ‘descendant of Saoraidhe’, a personal name derived from saordha ‘noble’. It has been Anglicized (‘translated’) as Freeman. Woulfe, however, believes the original Gaelic form was Ó Síoghraidh, from a borrowing of the Norse personal name Sigefrith.