Dillingham
A place-based surname from an English village name, probably meaning “the homestead or settlement associated with Dilla/Dylla’s people.”
The #6,995 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 64,443 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Dillingham is an English locational surname, taken from a place-name in Cambridgeshire. The name is generally analyzed as an Old English formation: a personal name such as Dylla/Dilla plus the group suffix -ingas (“people of”) and -ham (“homestead, village, settlement”). In that reading, the place-name means roughly “the homestead of Dilla’s people.”
History
As with many English locational surnames, it would originally have identified someone who came from Dillingham rather than describing a trade or trait. The surname is established in English records and later appears in North America, where it remains relatively uncommon. The 19th-century source excerpt also treats it as a local surname from an English place-name, though its wording is somewhat garbled by OCR.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The ending -ham in English place-names often means “village” or “homestead,” which is why Dillingham looks more like a settlement name than a personal description.
From the historical record
“or trench, and &y, a town — the town by the dike. DILLINGHAM. (Saxon.) Local A place in the county of Cambridge, England ; the town of the market ; the buying and selling place ; of paying out or telling money. Saxon, J)aelan: to divide, separate, throw off, pay over • and Aom, a village. DILLON. From the Welsh…”
— An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names