Gill Family History

English and Scottish: in northern England and Scotland, sometimes from Middle English Gille, Old Norse Gilli, which is of Irish (Gaelic) origin (see below), and pronounced with a hard g. As a personal name, it is not found after c. 1200. English and Scottish: topographic name from Middle English gille ‘deep glen, ravine’ (Old Norse (Norwegian) gil), pronounced with a hard g. The term is found mainly in northwestern England where Norwegian Vikings settled.

English: from a short form of Middle English Gilliam, a borrowing of Guillaume, a Central French form of William (see Gilliam), which is also attested in pet forms such as Gillot and Gilmin (see Gillett, Gilman). This name will have been pronounced with a hard g. English: from the Middle English personal name Gille, a pet form of Gillian, usually a female name but occasionally male. It also gave rise to the surnames Jill, Gell, and Jell and was pronounced with a soft g, hence the spellings with J-.

English: from the Middle English and Old French personal name Gille, a variant of Giles. Scottish, Irish, and Manx: shortened Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Gille (Scottish), Mac Giolla (Irish), patronymics from an occupational name for a servant or a short form of the various personal names formed by attaching this element to the name of a saint. See McGill.

The Old Norse personal name Gilli is probably of this origin and may lie behind some examples of the name in northern England. It is also a Manx surname meaning ‘son of the lad (i.e. servant)’. Scottish and Irish: shortened Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac An Ghoill (see Gall).

Norwegian: habitational name from any of the three farmsteads in western Norway named Gil, from Old Norse gil ‘ravine’. Dutch: cognate of Giles. Jewish (Israeli): artificial name from Hebrew gil ‘joy’. German: from a vernacular short form of the medieval personal name Aegilius, a later form of Latin Aegidius (see Giles). This surname is also found in France (Alsace and Lorraine). Polish and German: variant or a Germanized form of Polish Gil ‘bullfinch’. Indian (Punjab): Sikh name probably from Punjabi gil ‘moisture’, also meaning ‘prosperity’. There is a Jat tribe that bears this name; the Ramgarhia Sikhs also have a clan called Gill.