RYAN MILLER

From the Irish surname, Gaelic Ó Riain ‘descendant of Rian’. Ryan is associated with the film actor Ryan O'Neal (b. 1941) and is one of several names of Celtic origin that have become very popular throughout the English-speaking world since the 1990s. It is also now well established in North America as a girl's name.

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.