Your Names.

It's only in recent years that I've come to appreciate how obnoxious I was as a teenager. This is due in large part to meeting people younger than me who share my same interests. There really isn't anything more tedious than listening to someone elaborate on the history of their surname or to tell history jokes in any context other than a seminar or a class.
I think this makes me a self-loathing historian. Today I've googled and wikipedia-ed the origins of my surnames and ethnic backgrounds for around half an hour again. The industry based around this shit is completely bogus-- especially for Scottish surnames. Users looking for family history are hurriedly shuffled towards crude mock ups of heraldry, sept lists, and famous ancestors. Very little of it is real and what is real is completely superficial. White people are grasping desperately at ethnic straws and spending a lot of money to do it. That being said:

Geary
Irish: reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Gadhra ‘descendant of Gadhra’ (see O’Gara)
English: nickname for a wayward or capricious person, from Middle English ge(a)ry ‘fickle’, ‘changeable’, ‘passionate’ (a derivative of gere ‘fit of passion’, apparently a Scandinavian borrowing).

Meiners
Dutch variant on:
German: from the Germanic personal name Meinhard(t), composed of the elements magin ‘might’, ‘strength’ + hard ‘hardy’, ‘brave’, ‘strong’.

Schwartz
Black, Swarthy, German.

Nee
Irish or Scottish: reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Niadh ‘descendant of Nia’ or Ó Niadh ‘son of Nia’. With "Nia" meaning "champion."