Sharkey
An Irish surname most often understood as meaning “loving” or “affectionate,” from Gaelic searc, love.
The #4,163 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 36,263 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The usual explanation derives Sharkey from Irish Gaelic Searcach, built on searc, meaning “love” or “affection,” with a common adjectival ending meaning “full of” or “having the quality of.” In that reading, the surname originally described a loving, fond, or affectionate person. Older writers sometimes connected it with other forms or treated it as a nickname surname, but the Irish derivation is the standard one.
History
The name is established in Ireland, especially in the north and west, and appears in records in several anglicized spellings. In older genealogical and surname studies it is regularly grouped among surnames beginning with the Irish element O’/Mac forms that were later simplified in English usage. It is now carried both in Ireland and among the Irish diaspora, including the United States.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some 19th-century surname writers noticed Sharkey alongside a cluster of names that looked, to them, as if they might be linked to “shark” or “shirk,” but the standard Irish explanation points instead to searc, “love.”
From the historical record
“circare, to go round] SHARKEY (Gelt.) Loving, Amorous [Ir. Searcach (O'Sedfcaigh) — searc, love -|- the plen. suff. -ach (cp. Wei. serchog, loving] SHARLAND (Eng.) Dweller at the Shorn or Separated Land [f. O.E. ^c^ra« (pret. scear), to cut, shear + land]”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)