Mid-Week Mini: The Origin of the Word “Sheriff”

In this week’s Mid-Week Mini Episode, we talk about the etymology of the word “Sheriff.”

If you’ve ever watched an old Western, you know the word sheriff—the guy with the badge, the hat, and the authority to lock up outlaws. But have you ever wondered where that word actually came from?

Turns out, the word sheriff has roots way older than the Old West. It goes back almost a thousand years, all the way to medieval England. Back then, the country was divided into regions called shires. These were essentially counties—smaller administrative areas that made it easier to govern large stretches of land. And each shire had someone who acted as the king’s local representative. That person was called the reeve.

So if you were in charge of a shire, you were the shire reeve. Over time, that phrase got shortened in speech—because, well, humans love to take shortcuts when they talk. The words got smushed together and evolved phonetically into sheriff.

The shire reeve’s job wasn’t all that different from what a sheriff does today. They were responsible for keeping the peace, collecting taxes, enforcing the law, and making sure the king’s interests were represented locally. If there was a disturbance, or someone broke the law, the reeve had to take care of it. And if someone wasn’t paying their dues to the crown, the reeve was the one knocking on their door.

Basically, the sheriff started out as a tax collector, police officer, and local government official rolled into one.

The system came from the early days of English monarchy. Historians say that the position of reeve existed even before England was unified. There were manorial reeves—the local managers who oversaw a lord’s estate—and town reeves, who managed affairs in villages or boroughs. But once King Alfred the Great and later kings began organizing England into shires around the 9th and 10th centuries, the shire reeve became an important figure in maintaining royal control.

So when the Normans invaded in 1066—remember that from your high school history class?—they liked the system enough to keep it. But the Norman language and culture began to influence the local English dialects. Over centuries, “shire reeve” turned into “sheriff,” and that version stuck.

Now here’s the fun part: When English settlers came to the New World, they brought their systems of law and local government with them. So when colonial America started appointing local law enforcement officers, the term sheriff came along for the ride.

The first sheriff in what would become the United States was appointed in 1634 in Virginia’s James City County. His duties would have sounded familiar to that old medieval reeve—serving writs, enforcing judgments, and keeping the peace. Over time, as American government evolved and law enforcement became more professionalized, the sheriff’s role changed—but the title stayed.

And if you look at how the job works today, there’s still a little bit of that feudal flavor to it. Sheriffs are often elected by the people of their county, not appointed by the state or federal government. That’s a remnant of how the shire reeve represented a specific region’s interests.

Even the badge—one of the most recognizable symbols of law enforcement—has medieval roots. The idea of wearing an emblem to denote authority goes back to heraldry and coats of arms, where officials would display symbols to show who they served. So that shiny six-pointed star pinned to a Western lawman’s chest has more in common with a medieval crest than you might think.

So next time you hear someone talking about the sheriff’s department, remember—you’re actually hearing a word that’s nearly a millennium old. It’s a linguistic fossil from England’s early days of organized law and order, kept alive through centuries of history, conquest, colonization, and cowboy movies.

The Old West may have given the sheriff his swagger, but England gave him his name.

The internet says it’s true.