the last word in names

Okay, today I was looking up Gaelic names and stumbled on a partial answer to something that has always intrigued me- the origin of last names. Last names all have meanings I am told, and many of them are obvious.
Baker,
Tailor,
Adams,
Anderson
are all easy and rather boring. Some are less obvious and thus much more interesting: Pass (ask Brad),
and Pfann are two good examples.
Pfann actually means 'pan' in German. 'Back then' Jewish people in Germany bought names to fit into the culture. If you were rich you got nice names like Goldberg and Sliverbaum. If you were poor, well, you got stuck with Pfann.
But some last names defy explaination.
Shufflebottom.
Demme.
Levarko.
Buttling (thanks Craig, that was extremely funny).
Gilchrist.
That's were a little internet research comes in handy!

You know the those names that have 'gil'in them? Gilchrist, and Gillian are the two that I am familiar with, but I found a number of similar ones-
Gillanders,
Gillbride,
Gillies.
'Gil' means 'servant' or 'follower'.
Thus Gilchrist means 'servant of Christ',
Gillian or Gillean means 'follower of St. John',
Gillanders means 'servant of St. Andrew',
Gillbride means follower of St. Brigid (whoever she was),
and Gillies means 'servant of Jesus'.
(These are actually all newer version of old Gaelic names with completely unintelligable spellings.)
Isn't that cool?

I also discovered that Macbeth come from the earlier spelling Machbeatha and means 'son of life'. Nice.