The giles Surname
giles Name Meaning and History
- English and French: from a medieval personal name of which the original form was Latin Aegidius (from Greek aigidion ‘kid’, ‘young goat’). This was the name of a 7th-century Provençal hermit, whose cult popularized the name in a variety of more or less mutilated forms: Gidi and Gidy in southern France, Gil(l)i in the area of the Alpes-Maritimes, and Gil(l)e elsewhere. This last form was taken over to England by the Normans, but by the 12th century it was being confused with the Germanic names Gisel, a short form of Gilbert, and Gilo, which is from Gail (as in Gaillard).
- Irish: adopted as an Anglicized equivalent of Gaelic Ó Glaisne, a County Louth name, based on glas ‘green’, ‘blue’, ‘gray’.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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