Cogswell
An English surname from Coggeshall in Essex, originally a place-name that later softened into Cogswell.
The #9,603 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 91,237 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Cogswell is generally explained as a reduced or altered form of the place-name Coggeshall, a town in Essex. Older writers broke Coggeshall into elements like a word for a small boat and a word for a shoal, but that folk-style analysis is not certain. The safest sense is simply “someone from Coggeshall.”
History
Historical surname dictionaries treat Cogswell as an English locational surname and note that it and the related form Coxwell arose by corruption from Coggeshall. The name appears to have stayed relatively local in England, while later bearers are found more widely through migration to North America. In the United States it is uncommon but established.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Joseph Green Cogswell (1786–1871) was a prominent American educator and librarian, associated with the Astor Library in New York.
From the historical record
“foster a local nomenclature. The early Coggesballs by corruption became Cogswell and Cox well. There need be no hesitation inac- ceptingthis origin. It is absolutely certain. The surname is still con- fined to a limited radius of the”
— A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, with special American instances