Head
A surname from a top, headland, or the upper end of a place, with an added line of Scottish use as a baptismal name.
The #1,285 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 11,313 Americans shares it.
Etymology
In English, head originally meant the top, end, or brow of something—especially a promontory or the source of a river—and surnames from it often pointed to where someone lived. The name could therefore arise for a person living “at the head” of a valley, road, or hill, or near a headland such as Beachy Head. A separate Scottish line is noted in older sources, where Head or Hed appears as a baptismal name in the 12th century, with forms such as Hedde and Old English Heved.
History
The surname is well established in England and Scotland and has a straightforward topographic sense in older surname collections. Similar place-based forms with -head are common in northern English and Scottish naming, and related surnames like Headen or Headache were occasionally explained as derivatives in 19th-century works, though not all such proposals are secure. In modern use, Head is also encountered as a simple shortened form in some families without an obvious surviving place link.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Older lexicographers noted that names like Beachy Head preserve the same old meaning of “head” as a ridge, end, or promontory.
From the historical record
“&c. See next article. HEAD. A promontory or foreland, as Beachy Head, Spurn Head. Also the source of a river. Head or Hed, was a baptismal name in Scotland, in the XII. century. Hedde, without prefix, is found in H.E., as is also the A-Sax. form Heved. HEADACHE. Mr. Ferguson says, "properly Headick, a diminutive of…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom