Allgood
An English surname that likely began as a descriptive or nickname name meaning “all good,” though some early scholars also linked it to an old personal name.
The #6,513 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 59,260 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname is usually explained as coming from the English phrase “all good,” used either as a nickname or as a very early byname. Some 19th-century writers also suggested a connection with an old Anglo-Saxon personal name, recorded as Algod or similar forms, which they glossed as a compound with an element meaning “elf.” The name may therefore have two possible layers in older scholarship: a transparent English meaning and a possible earlier personal-name source.
History
Early surname writers noted forms such as Algod before the Domesday era and argued that Allgood could descend from that name rather than from the modern-sounding phrase. The name appears in English records as a rare surname, and later reference works treated it as established in Britain, with occasional continental parallels being unrelated or only superficially similar. In modern use it remains uncommon, especially in the United States.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Victorian surname writers were intrigued by Allgood because it looks like a cheerful English phrase, but they still debated whether it was really a nickname or a survival of an older pre-Conquest personal name.
From the historical record
“dorf. ALLGOOD. (Saxon.) The same as the English All-good. ALSOP. (Local) From Alsop, Co. Derby, England. One might imagine it a corruption of Ale-shop, a name given to one who kept an ale-shop. A very appropriate name at the present day; for "Alsop's ale" is celebrated all the world over. ALYERSTON or ALYERTON.…”
— An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names