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Updated April 18, 2022

Family name origins & meanings

  • Irish : reduced form of O’Shields, an alternative Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Siadhail ‘descendant of Siadhal’.
  • Northern English and Scottish : habitational name from a pair of places in Northumberland and County Durham (now both in Tyne and Wear) called North and South Shields, named with Middle English schele ‘shed’, ‘hut’, ‘shelter’.

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