Updated June 9, 2019

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Family name origins & meanings

  • English : topographic name for someone living by a lake or river, from Middle English by ‘by’, ‘beside’ + water ‘water’.
  • Irish : pseudo-translation (due to confusion with sruth ‘stream’) of Gaelic Ó Srutháin ‘descendant of Sruithán’, a personal name from a diminutive of sruith ‘sage’, ‘elder’. Bywater is found as the English form of this Gaelic name in County Cork, while in Mayo the usual Anglicization is Ryan.