Marchant
An old spelling of Merchant, ultimately from a word for a trader or dealer.
The #5,909 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 52,922 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Marchant is an older spelling of Merchant. It comes from Old French marchant, meaning a trader or dealer, from the verb marcher/mercier-type commercial vocabulary ultimately tied to buying and selling. In English records, the form survived as a surname and was sometimes treated as a spelling variant of Merchant rather than a separate name.
History
The surname appears in medieval and early modern records, especially in England. Nineteenth-century surname writers often noted Marchant as the older or more correct spelling of Merchant, reflecting French influence after the Norman period. It remains a relatively uncommon surname today, but is well established in Britain and places shaped by British migration.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some older dictionaries explicitly gloss Marchant as the same surname as Merchant, showing how spelling could vary before modern standardization.
From the historical record
“]M ARCH AM. A parish in Berks, MARCHANT. The okl and more cor- rect spelling of Merchant. Fr. marchancl. MARCHBANKS. A corruption of Marjoribanks, which is most vilely so pronounced. MARCUS. The Latin form of Mark, MARCY. Probably from Marcei, a vil- lage near Argentau in Normandy.”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom