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The shanks Surname

shanks Name Meaning and History

Scottish and northern Irish: nickname for someone with long legs or some peculiarity of gait, from Old English sceanca ‘shin bone’, ‘leg’. This vocabulary word was preserved in Scotland, whereas in England it was replaced by Old Norse leggr.

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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shanks Family Facts

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Distribution of shanks Families in the US in 1920
Number of shanks families
 75-147
 26-74
 1-25
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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The shanks name in History

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