Cope
A surname with several possible roots, including a hilltop or shaw, a priest’s cope, or a Middle Dutch/French word for a merchant or buyer.
The #1,964 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 16,771 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Cope has more than one plausible origin. One traditional explanation connects it with a topographic word meaning a hilltop, ridge, or little wood on a hill, from an Old English or related northern form. Other etymologies link it to the cope, the clerical vestment, or to a commercial term ultimately from French or Middle Dutch meaning a buyer, trader, or dealer. Because different early sources point to different roots, the surname is best treated as having mixed or uncertain origins rather than a single fixed source.
History
The name appears early in English records in several forms, and medieval spellings make it hard to separate one family line from another. In later surname dictionaries it is often grouped with similar occupational or nickname forms such as Copeman, and sometimes with northern or East Anglian place-based forms. It is also found as a modern English surname in several regions, with no single exclusive center of origin.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Early surname scholars disagreed so much about Cope that it was sometimes explained as a place-name, sometimes as a vestment-maker’s name, and sometimes as a trader’s name.
From the historical record
“Couimre, Cuparius, &c., H.R. COPE. In Domesd. signifies a bill. Bailey's Diet. COPEiNIAN. 1 . A chapman or merchant. Halliwell. 2. Bailey says that c(y;e was a tribute paid to the king out of the lead mines in Wicksworth, co. Derb)'. Perhaps the collector of this tax was the original Copeman. 3. Cope is also the…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom