Bedford
A habitational surname from Bedford, the historic county town in Bedfordshire, England.
The #4,029 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 35,029 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Bedford is a place-name surname taken from the town of Bedford. The place name is usually explained from Old English elements meaning a river ford associated with a man called Beda or a similar personal name, though the exact first element is not always treated as certain in older works. As a surname, it simply marked someone as having come from Bedford or from land connected with the town.
History
The surname appears in medieval records, and Lower cites Godwidere and Osgar de Bedeford as tenants in Bedfordshire in Domesday Book (1086). Like many locational surnames, it spread beyond the original town as people moved elsewhere in England and later overseas. It is now well known in Britain and the United States.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Bedford is one of the surnames that survives unchanged as both a place name and a family name, making its geographic origin especially transparent.
From the historical record
“historian. BEDFORD. Godwidere and Osgar de Bedeford were tenants in capite in Bed- fordshire, 1086. Domesd. The former had held the same lands before the Conquest. BEDHAMPTOJT. A parish in Hants. De Bedampton, H.R. BEDIXGFIELD. Orgerus de Pugeys (or Longueville) came hither at the Con- quest, and was one of the…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom