Cargill
A Scottish surname from a place in Perthshire, later also influenced by Gaelic and older forms like MacArdgill.
The #7,363 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 68,246 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname is chiefly locational, taken from the parish of Cargill in Perthshire, Scotland. Older surname writers also connected it with Gaelic-family forms such as MacArdgill and related spellings, showing that the name may have been reshaped by Gaelic and Scots usage over time. The place-name itself is the source of the surname, though the deeper meaning of the place-name is not certain from these excerpts alone.
History
The name is historically Scottish and is recorded by 19th-century surname scholars as a Perthshire place-name surname. It also appears in Gaelicized and variant spellings, including forms influenced by Mac- names. In modern use it has spread beyond Scotland, but it remains most strongly associated with Scottish origins.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Older reference works explicitly note Cargill as the name of a parish in Perthshire, which is often how Scottish locational surnames first entered family use.
From the historical record
“Sum. ii. 30. See, however, CarJ^ CARGILL. A parish in Perthshire. CARL. CARRAL. CARLIN. Foreign modifications of Carolus, Charles. CARLE. A-Sax. ceorl, a man, a rustic, a stout man. Carl is used in all these seuses in Scotland. Also see under Caryll. CARLEILL. See Carlisle. CARLEY. Scot, carlie, a little man—”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom