The shields Surname
shields Name Meaning and History
- 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’. There has been much confusion between Shields and Shield and their variants.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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