Blackford
A locational surname originally given to someone from a place called Blackford, meaning “dark ford.”
The #7,443 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 68,978 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Blackford is a locational surname from places named Blackford in England and Scotland. The name is made from Old English or early English elements meaning “black” or “dark” plus “ford,” a river crossing, so the literal sense is “the dark ford.” In surname use, it would have identified someone who came from one of these places or from a similarly named minor locality.
History
The name appears in several British localities, including parishes in Somerset and Perthshire, which helped it spread as a surname. Nineteenth-century surname writers consistently treated Blackford as a place-name surname rather than as a nickname or occupational name. It is also found in records in London and in later English-speaking populations abroad.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Many English surnames ending in -ford point back to a ford near a settlement, and Blackford is a straightforward example of that pattern.
From the historical record
“consequently local. BLACKFORD. Parishes in cos. Perth BLA and Somerset, and minor localities in many others. BLACKIIALL. Or Blackwell. A town- ship in Cumberland. BLACKHEAD. Either from black hair,”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom