Shore
A topographic surname for someone who lived by the shore, riverbank, or lakeside.
The #3,523 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 30,478 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Shore is an English topographic surname from a word meaning the edge or bank of a body of water. The 19th-century sources connect it with Middle English schore and with an older English word meaning something like “projecting” or “bordering,” used of the edge of land beside water. In practice, it would have described someone living by the sea, a river, or a lake.
History
The surname appears in several English place-based forms, including Shoreditch and Shoreham, which show how widely the place-name element was used. Writers such as Bardsley also treated it as a surname from residence near the sea-shore. It remains most common in England and other English-speaking countries.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The surname is closely tied to a family of English place names, especially Shoreditch in London and Shoreham in Sussex.
From the historical record
“sceoppa, a stall, booth] SHORE (Eng.) . Dweller at the Shore or Strand [M.E. schore \ prob. f. O.E. , . sc(f)orian, to project] Shoreditch J58”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)