Fillmore
A surname that likely began as a place-based name, probably from an English local place name such as Finborough or another similar location.
The #7,473 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 69,272 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The historical sources most often treat Fillmore as a variant or altered form of older place-based surnames such as Phillimore, Filmer, or Filmore, rather than as a name with a clearly independent meaning. One suggestion in the older literature connects it with Finborough in Suffolk, though the printed excerpts are hesitant and do not settle the point. If that derivation is right, the surname would ultimately be locational, meaning the family came from or was identified with a particular place.
History
In English records, forms like Fillmore, Filmore, and Phillimore appear as spelling variants of one another, which is typical of surnames before spelling was standardized. The name is relatively uncommon today, but it has been carried to North America and elsewhere through English-speaking migration. Because the older scholarship is cautious and partly speculative, the exact local source should be treated as likely but not certain.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Older surname dictionaries sometimes grouped Fillmore with other names that look very different at first glance, because scribes often wrote the same family name in several competing forms.
From the historical record
“suff. -kin. , PHILLIMORE, V. Fillmore. PHILLIS, for the French F4lice, Lat. Felicia (M.Lat. iorm also Felisia), a fem. form of Felix, q.V.”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)