Findlay
A Scottish surname from the Gaelic personal name Finlay, originally meaning “fair hero” or “white warrior.”
The #7,387 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 68,473 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Findlay is a Scottish surname taken from the personal name Finlay, which appears in older spelling as Findlay. The name is generally explained from Gaelic elements meaning “fair” or “white” plus “warrior” or “hero,” though older writers sometimes treated it simply as a variant of Finlay. In surname form, it began as a name identifying someone as the son or descendant of a man called Finlay.
History
The surname is well established in Scotland, especially in the north and northeast, and was carried abroad through later Scottish migration. Historical records also show the spelling in noble, clerical, and ordinary family lines, reflecting its use as a hereditary surname rather than only a given name. In some contexts the form Findlay and the more common Finlay overlap, and both have long been used side by side.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Nineteenth-century surname dictionaries often pointed straight from Findlay to Finlay, treating the two as essentially the same family name.
From the historical record
“of Fordyce in Banffshire. FINDLAY. FINDLEY. See Finlay. FINDON. A parish in Sussex. FINER. A>efiner of metals. "Fyners," with this meaning, are mentioned in the old poem called Cocke Lorelle's Bote. FINES. See Fynes. FINEUX. "The Frenchman which craftily and cleanly conveyed himself, and bis prisoner T. Cryoll, a…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom