Localities

One of the largest categories of English surnames is that of placenames - the name of a farm, village, town, county or country used to identify someone who originated there. As these can be found in any atlas they are not listed here. The following names are general ones that could indicate which part of a village one lived in or what feature was nearby. Most of these are self-explanatory but often those that look like a placename with the -am ending coming from -ham are actually ending in the Old English dative plural which would come after a lost preposition meaning 'at' or 'of'.

This collection of names was compiled by Kate Monk and is ©1997, Kate Monk.

Copies may be made for personal use only.