13,154 Global Shanks Family Members

Shanks Family History

This unusual and long-established surname is of Anglo-Saxon, and is now confined chiefly to northern English and Scottish regions. Shanks or Shank is a nickname for someone with particularly long legs, or some peculiarity of gait. The derivation is from the Olde English pre 7th Century word "sceanca", meaning shin-bone, leg, which was preserved in Scotland and northern England while in the rest of the county the Olde Norse word "leggr", leg, was adopted, although the surname remained in England for a while, as in Stephen Schankes, recorded in the Norfolk Hundred Rolls of 1275. In Scotland, Murdoch Shank had a charter of lands at Kinghorn, Fife, from Robert the Bruce in 1319...