Card
Usually a short form of Caird, a Scottish nickname for a travelling tinker or gipsy, though it was sometimes also linked to the carding trade.
The #3,651 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 31,692 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Card is explained in older surname dictionaries as the same as Scots Caird. In that tradition, it comes from a nickname for a travelling tinker or gipsy, rather than from the playing-card word. Some writers also associated it with carding wool, because a related surname, Carder, clearly refers to the wool-comber’s tool called a card.
History
Lower treats Card as the same name as Caird, and Bardsley likewise glosses it as a Scots surname meaning a travelling tinker. Because it is short and very close in form to occupational names like Carder and Cardmaker, the spelling has sometimes been discussed alongside those surnames, but the best historical reading for Card itself is the Scots nickname. In English-language records it may also have been simplified from Caird or related forms.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The surname is a good example of how one short spelling can hide a much older Scots nickname rather than the everyday English word "card."
From the historical record
“Wales. Peerage. See Cradock. CARD. The same as Caird, which see. CARDEN. CARDON. ^Villiam Cardon or Cardun appears in the Domesd. of Essex, as one of the homines of Geoffrey de Mag- naville. A township in Cheshire bears the name of Garden. CARDER. One who dresses wool, so called from the card or comb which he uses.”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom