Busby
A place-based surname from several English and Scottish localities called Busby or Bushby, literally tied to a bushy or wooded place.
The #2,320 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 19,598 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Busby is a locational surname, taken from places called Busby, especially Great Busby in Yorkshire and Busby in Renfrewshire, Scotland. The place-name is usually explained from an old word for a bush or grove plus the common place-name element -by, meaning a settlement or village. In other words, it likely meant something like 'settlement by the bushes' or 'wooded village.'
History
The surname appears in medieval and later records as a local name, and English and Scottish bearers may derive from more than one place of origin. Nineteenth-century surname writers also connected it with Bushby and other similar local forms, showing that spelling was not always fixed. Today Busby is found in both Britain and the English-speaking diaspora, including the United States.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
One old source notes that -by is a Danish place-name ending meaning a village or town, which is why Busby belongs to the same broad pattern as names like Selby and Willoughby.
From the historical record
“Locality unknown. BUSBY. A village in co. Renfrew. BUSH. See Bysh. This word, now applied to a low thick tree, formerly meant a whole wood or grove (sylva, nemus), and this proper sense is retained in America and Australia. Atte-Busche therefore, in me- dieval writings, is equivalent to De Bosco, while the singular…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom