Family name origins & meanings
- English : of uncertain origin. Most probably a habitational name from Shocklach in Cheshire, named in Old English with sceocca ‘goblin’, ‘evil spirit’ + læcc ‘boggy stream’. In the 17th century, the name was most common in Buckinghamshire, England.
- Perhaps also an Americanized form of Swiss German Schoechli, a topographic name meaning ‘barn’, from a diminutive of Schoch.
- Richard Shockley (b. about 1634, probably in Buckinghamshire, England) arrived in MD in 1671.