Applegate
An English habitational surname from a place name meaning “apple enclosure,” later sometimes treated as a form of Applegarth.
The #3,046 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 26,249 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Applegate is generally explained as a reduced or altered form of an older place-name surname, especially Applegarth. The first element is apple, and the second is usually taken as “garth,” meaning an enclosure or yard; some later writers noted that the name was also associated with the word gate in place-name interpretation, but the older “apple enclosure” sense is the safer one. In short, it points to someone who came from, or was identified with, a place called something like “apple yard” or “apple enclosure.”
History
19th- and early-20th-century surname writers repeatedly treated Applegate as a variant or corruption of Applegarth, and that view is echoed in the sources here. The name is documented in English records, and later it also appears in North American usage, where it has become the more familiar modern form. Because the evidence is partly interpretive and older scholarship sometimes varied in spelling analysis, the exact pathway from Applegarth to Applegate is not fully certain.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
A number of surname dictionaries list Applegate right alongside fruit-names like Apple, Appleby, Appleton, and Appleyard, showing how often old place-names were reinterpreted by later readers as simple “apple” surnames.
From the historical record
“yard. ' Appelle-garth Cath. Angl. This sui now generally found as Applegate. Geoflrevde Auxlgarth. K. WilDaiD Aplsnrt, «. Norf. : FF. ii. iiol Ralplide AM]ianl,CD. Baeka, 1171. A. Kobect dd Apdrargh, co. York, ibid. fUbb Ie(de) ApeJKiit, co. Buckm, ibid”
— A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, with special American instances