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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Irish (Munster) : reduced form of McSheehy, an Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Síthigh ‘son of Sítheach’, a personal name from the adjective sítheach ‘peaceful’ or ‘other worldly’. (The noun síth, from which this adjective derives, means basically ‘settlement’, hence both ‘peace’ and ‘place inhabited by other world beings’.) In some cases the name may be a reduced Anglicized form of Ó Síthigh, ‘descendant of Sítheach’, a later form of the Irish name.

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