Bagby
A surname most likely from an English place name, meaning someone who came from Bagby in Yorkshire.
The #6,174 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 55,710 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Bagby is generally understood as a locational surname from the village of Bagby in North Yorkshire. The place-name is usually analyzed as Old Norse or Old English in form, with the final element "-by" meaning "farm" or "settlement"; the first element is probably a personal name or descriptive word that is not completely certain. In other words, the surname originally identified someone by the place they came from.
History
Locational surnames like Bagby became hereditary in medieval England as people moved away from their home villages. The name is established in Britain and later appears in the United States through immigration and internal migration. Because the place-name analysis is not fully certain, some details of the earliest meaning remain tentative.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The ending -by is a clue to Scandinavian influence in parts of northern England, where many place names preserve Old Norse settlement terms.