O'Day
An Irish surname that may come from an old personal name or nickname, though some historical writers also linked it to Anglo-Saxon and Norse roots.
The #8,878 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 83,716 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname is usually treated as an Irish name in modern usage, often written O’Day, but the old surname literature gives more than one possible explanation. One line of scholarship connects it with earlier names like Ody/Oddy/Odell and with the old personal names Odo, Odda, or Oddi; another speculative suggestion ties it to an old feminine form related to the word for a grandmother. Because the historical evidence is thin and the older writers were not certain, the exact root is best left open.
History
Lower’s dictionary simply points ODAY to Ody, showing that it was already being treated as a variant surname form in the 19th century. Ferguson likewise groups Oday with Oddy and Ody and suggests possible links to early English and Norse personal names. In later use, the spelling O’Day became the familiar anglicized Irish form, especially in English-speaking countries.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
19th-century surname scholars could not agree on Oday’s origin, and one of the proposed explanations even involved an Old English word glossed as “grandmother.”
From the historical record
“nonymous with Woodham. ODAY. SeeOdy. ODBURVILE. OBLTRVILLA. The Domesday form of Auberville. Eoger de Odburvile held eighteen lordships in the counties of Essex and Suffolk ; his brother William held Berlai ; and Robert de 0. was a tenant in chief in co. Somerset. The Itineraire de la Normandie shows six places…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom