The family held many high commanding ranks in the Russian military, governorships and eventually the rank of Count of the Russian Empire.

The Sheremetyevo International Airport, built in the 1950s and named from the nearby settlement of Sheremetevskiy [ru] (dating from about 1901), from its railway-station Sheremetevskaya [ru] and from the railway-line founder Sergei Dmitrievich Sheremetev [ru] (1844-1918), indirectly commemorates the family.

[1][failed verification] Russian surnames are gender sensitive, the masculine form of the name being Sheremetev (Шереметев) and the feminine being rendered as Sheremeteva (Шереметева).

One theory proposes that the name originated with the Turkic Chuvash language word seremet (шеремет), meaning "poor man".

Another theory translates the nickname Seremet as "having light steps", "hot" (about a horse), while the third theory suggests that the name originates with the Tatar/Turkic-Persian shir Akhmat, which literally translates to "Tiger Ahmet" and can be read as both "brave Ahmet" and "Pious Ahmet.