Let me indulge in a pet peeve and pedantism here:

The law enforcement officer of whom we speak ALWAYS has only one L; it's spelled "marshal", with one L.

"Marshall", so spelled, is a man's given name, or a family name.

Yeah, I guess there could be a "Marshal Marshall", if a member of that clan went into law enforcement.


As to the other officer, it's "sheriff", with ONE R and two Fs.
It refers back to the medieval usage, of the Reeve, a high officer representing the King's peace in a given area. The Reeve for a shire was the "shire Reeve", which became our word "sheriff".

Dave Oesterreich