Land
A surname with several possible roots, most often from a place-name or a word for open ground, and sometimes from a short form of a fuller name.
The #1,704 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 14,621 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Land can be a topographic surname from the common Germanic word for "land" or "open country," used for someone who lived by a stretch of ground, a clearing, or an area of cultivated land. In English it may also be a shortened form of a longer name containing Land- or a surname taken from a place-name. Because the form is so short and widespread, several different local origins may have merged under the same spelling.
History
The surname is found in England and later in North America, but the brief form makes it hard to trace to one single family line. In some cases it may have arisen independently in more than one place from ordinary topographic or habitational naming. The modern U.S. count suggests it survives as a modestly common but not especially concentrated surname.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Short surnames like Land often look simple, but they can hide several unrelated origins that ended up spelled the same way.
From the historical record
“Wales is the country of the British Isles which is poorest in sur- names. In the 16th Annual Report of the Registrar-General for Eng- land and Wales (1853) it isstated that the surnames of the Principality, if surnames they can be called, do not present the same variety [as in England], most of them having been…”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)