Sherry
An English and Irish surname that can come from an Irish nickname meaning “the colt,” or from later English spellings tied to Sheriff or Sheridan.
The #4,846 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 42,463 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname has more than one possible origin. In Irish use, it was explained as coming from Mac Searraigh, meaning “son of Searrach,” where Irish searrach means “colt” or “filly”; another Irish form, O’Searraigh, is also noted in the older sources. English writers also suggested that Sherry could sometimes be a reduced or altered form of Sheriff, or in some cases a form of Sheridan.
History
The name appears in both Irish and English surname traditions, so not every Sherry family will share the same root. In Ireland, the Gaelic-derived explanation is the stronger one in the older scholarship; in England, later surname writers often treated it as a variant or corruption of other surnames. Because the forms were recorded loosely in earlier centuries, the spelling Sherry may reflect different origins in different places.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
One nineteenth-century source linked the Irish root to searrach, the word for a young horse or colt.
From the historical record
“1321-2. SHERRY (Celt.) for the Irish i MacSearraigh = Son of Searrach, i.e. the Colt [Ir. searrach, genit. searraigh, a colt, filly] 2 O'Searraigh = Grandson of Sear- rach. SHERSON for Sherston, q.v. SHERSTON (Eng.) Bel. to Sherston (Wilts)”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)