ELIZA MILLER

Short form of Elizabeth, first used in the 16th century, and popular in the 18th and 19th centuries as an independent given name. It was used by George Bernard Shaw for the main female character, Eliza Dolittle, in his play Pygmalion (1913), which was the basis for the musical and film My Fair Lady.

English and Scottish: occupational name for a miller. The standard modern vocabulary word represents the northern Middle English term, an agent derivative of mille ‘mill’, reinforced by Old Norse mylnari (see Milner). In southern, western, and central England Millward (literally, ‘mill keeper’) was the usual term. The American surname has absorbed many cognate surnames from other European languages, for example French Meunier, Dumoulin, Demoulins, and Moulin; German Mueller; Dutch Molenaar; Italian Molinaro; Spanish Molinero; Hungarian Molnár; Slavic Mlinar, etc.