Kirkland
A locational surname meaning someone from a place called Kirkland, literally “church land.”
The #1,161 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 10,195 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Kirkland is a place-name surname built from kirk, the northern English and Scots word for “church,” plus land, meaning land or territory. The literal sense is “church land” or “land belonging to the church.” In surname use, it usually identified someone who came from one of several places called Kirkland in northern Britain.
History
The name is strongly associated with northern England and Scotland, where several Kirklands existed in Cumberland, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Fife, Dumfries, and Lanark. Nineteenth-century surname writers treated it as a straightforward local name, and variants such as Kirtland and Kirtlin reflect regional spelling shifts. The surname later spread widely beyond its original districts.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some older surname dictionaries note that Kirkland could point to more than one village or parish, so different families may have adopted the name independently.
From the historical record
“a liberty in Yorkshire. KiRKLAND. Villages in tlie shires of Fife, Dumfries, Laiiark, &c. KIRK]MAN. A northern form of Cluirch- man, which see. KIRKNESS, A headland in Shetland. KIRKPATR ICK. Parishes In the shires of Kircudbright and Dumfries.”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom