SILLARS

Sillars is a surname recognised chiefly within the United Kingdom, particularly in Scotland, and is classed as having Gaelic roots. The form of the name recognised today may have evolved from earlier spellings recorded in medieval muster rolls and church registers.

The most widely accepted derivation is that the surname originated from the place name Siller or Sillar, which denotes a village or settlement in Scotland. The Gaelic term sìol, meaning "seed" or "descendant", is thought to underlie the place name, suggesting that early bearers of the name were identified as descendants of a particular family or clan associated with that locality. Over time, the orthography of the surname shifted from the original place-based spelling to the form Sillars that is common today.

Other etymological explanations, documented by contemporary scholarship, propose a number of independent origins for the name, of which four have traditionally been cited. Firstly, the name may have been a metonymic occupational label for someone employed in the cellars of a great house or monastery, deriving from the Anglo‑French word cellier, meaning an underground room suitable for storing food. Secondly, it may have signalled a saddler, from the word seller, in its archaic sense of a maker or retailer of saddles. Thirdly, the surname could have been given to a tradesman or merchant, derived from the Middle English verb sellen meaning to sell or deliver, and at times was also applied to a silver smith. Finally, it may have been a topographical name for a person who lived in a cottage, with its roots in the pre‑7th‑century Old English word gesell.

Historical documentation confirms the early use of variants of this surname in both England and Scotland. The earliest recorded spelling, Alriz Sellere, appears in the Inquisitio Eliensis of Cambridgeshire in 1086, during the reign of King William I of England. Later, the name appears in the registries of the Knights Templars in the 12th century as William Sellerarius. In London, the name is recorded in parish registers: Dorothie Sellers was entered as the wife of William Boswell on 17 March 1602 at St. Giles Cripplegate. The first Scottish record of the name is found among the city of Glasgow registers in 1719, where John Sillars is listed.

Throughout its history the surname has manifested in several orthographic variants, notably Sellars, Sellers, and Sellors in England, and Sillers and Sillars in Scotland. These variations illustrate the fluidity of spelling in the medieval and early modern periods, as well as the influence of local dialects and administrative recording practices.

In contemporary times, the surname Sillars is recognised as an exemplar of Gaelic-derived family names that have been transmitted across centuries, maintaining a connection to place, occupation, and lineage that was characteristic of Scottish naming traditions. The name’s multifaceted origins reflect a broader pattern in which surnames can accrue multiple independent etymologies, thereby offering a rich field for onomastic studies within the United Kingdom.

Typical given names associated with the Sillars surname

Male

• Andrew
• Daniel
• David
• Donald
• Duncan
• James
• John
• Kenneth
• Robert
• Steven
• Stuart
• Thomas
• Vincent
• William

Female

• Amanda
• Anne
• Catherine
• Elizabeth
• Emma
• Jacqueline
• Laura
• Margaret
• Patricia
• Sarah

Similar and related surnames

Related and similar names are generated algorithmically based on the spelling, and may not necessarily share an etymology.

How to communicate the surname Sillars in...

Braille

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Morse

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Semaphore

Famous people named Sillars

• Jim Sillars - Scottish politician

Names and descriptions courtesy of Wikipedia, and may contain errors. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every famous person with this name.

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