Where the Marshall name comes from

Marshall comes from the Middle English mareshal, a word that first meant a groom or a farrier. Behind it sits a Germanic compound meaning horse servant, built from the roots that also give English mare and shalk. The word rose with the job, and mareshal later became a title for various types of official. In England and Scotland the surname settled in two forms: a status name for the man in charge of the horses of a royal household, and an occupational name for anyone who looked after horses or held custody of prisoners.

Two other lines reach the same spelling from elsewhere, because as a French surname Marshall is a variant of Mercier and as a German surname a variant of Marschall. From the 19th century onward it also travelled the other way, transferred off the surname and used as a unisex given name.