La Salle
A French surname meaning “the hall” or “the manor house,” originally marking someone who lived near such a place.
The #8,646 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 81,185 Americans shares it.
Etymology
La Salle comes from French la salle, literally “the hall” or “the large room,” from Old French salle. In medieval place-names and surnames, this could point to someone who lived by a hall, manor house, or similar prominent building. The form with the article la is typical of French surnames that preserve a preposition or article from the original place description.
History
English-language surname writers in the 19th and early 20th centuries treated La Salle as a French locational name, and noted that English Sale can sometimes be a reduced form of it. The surname is also associated with French toponymic usage more broadly, where names often retain the article, as in Delacroix or Dubois. In North America, the best-known bearer is the explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, which helped keep the name visible outside France.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The same French word behind this surname also appears in many place names and in the title of historical buildings; in surname form, it often preserves the original article la.
From the historical record
“Layton. A loc. n., Ess. Lazel. Fr. Lasalle ; a p.n. See Lascelles Lazenby. A loc. n., Yorks. Comp. Lazonby, Cumb.”
— British Family Names: their origin and meaning (2nd ed.)