Sherman

Boy name variations

Family name origins & meanings

• English : occupational name for a sheepshearer or someone who used shears to trim the surface of finished cloth and remove excess nap, from Middle English shereman ‘shearer’.
• Americanized spelling of German Schuermann.
• Jewish (Ashkenazic) : occupational name for a tailor, from Yiddish sher ‘scissors’ + man ‘man’.
• Roger Sherman (1722–93), the only man to sign all three documents at the foundation of the American republic (the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution), was born in Newton, MA, a descendant of Capt. John Sherman, who had emigrated in about 1636 to MA from Dedham, Essex, England, where his father was a farmer, following his brother Edmund, who had emigrated two years earlier. A descendant of Edmund Sherman was the U.S. general William Tecumseh Sherman (1820–91), who led the Union march through GA. He was born in Lancaster, OH, the son of a judge; his middle name was bestowed in honor of a Shawnee chieftain.