Leeds
A habitational surname taken from the city of Leeds in Yorkshire.
The #8,659 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 81,356 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Leeds is a locational surname from the city and historic town of Leeds in Yorkshire. The place-name is usually traced to an Old English river-name or district-name, commonly explained as meaning a broad or swift-flowing stream, though the exact pre-English or early English origin is not entirely certain. As a surname, it simply marked someone as coming from Leeds or from land connected with the place.
History
Lower explicitly glosses Leeds as "the great town in Yorkshire," and later surname dictionaries treat it as a straightforward place-name surname. Like many locational surnames, it could be adopted by people who moved away from Yorkshire and were then identified by their home town. The name is also familiar from the long-established city itself, which became one of the major urban centers of northern England.
Origin
Regions
Fun fact
The surname and the city share the same spelling, so in records it can sometimes be hard to tell whether 'Leeds' is a family name or just a place reference without more context.
From the historical record
“found in Tuckerman, which see. LEEDS. The great town in Yorkshire. LEEK. A town in Staffordshire, and parishes in cos. York and "Warwick. The Leekes of Longford, co. Salop, trace to Ealph L. of Ludlow, A.D. 1334. LEEMAN. See Lee, and the termina- tion JIAX. LEEMING. A chapeby in Yorkshire.”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom