Litchfield
A surname taken from the English city of Lichfield, literally linked in older folk etymology to a place-name thought to mean “field of the dead.”
The #7,737 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 71,969 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Litchfield is a surname from the place-name Lichfield in Staffordshire. Older writers often explained the town name as Old English words for “corpse” or “dead body” plus “field,” giving the picturesque sense “field of the dead.” That explanation reflects a long-standing traditional reading of the name, though the place-name’s early history is more complicated and the modern spelling is Lichfield rather than Litchfield.
History
The surname is a typical English locational name, originally used for someone who came from Lichfield or lived near it. The spelling with -tch- is a later surname form alongside the standard place-name spelling. In the historical excerpts, 19th-century surname dictionaries treat it simply as a town-derived name.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Lichfield is also the name of a bishop’s see, which helped keep the place-name familiar in historical records and surname dictionaries.
From the historical record
“LIT. See Lite. LITCHFIELD. The city in co. Stafford, more properly written Lichfield. LITE. See Lyte. LITHERLAND. A township of Sefton, CO. Lancashire. LITHGOW. A contraction of Linlith- gow, a well-known Scotch town. LITT. O. E. lite, little.”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom