Parks
Usually an English surname for someone who lived by or worked at a park, though it can also be a plural-looking form of Park or a shortened form of Parkins.
The #354 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 3,485 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Parks is most often explained as a plural or possessive-looking form of Park, from Middle English park, meaning an enclosed piece of land such as a deer park or preserved hunting ground. In medieval use, the word ultimately came through Anglo-Norman French from Latin parcus, "enclosure." Some sources also treat Parks as a shortened or altered form of Parkins, so not every family with the surname descends from the same root.
History
19th-century surname books note Parks alongside Park, Parkes, and Parkyns, and warn that some examples are simply pluralized forms of Park while others may be abbreviations of Parkins. The name is well established in England and also appears in Ireland and the United States. In American records it has been common enough to rank among the more frequent surnames, reflecting both British immigration and later natural growth.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some old surname dictionaries group Parks with a whole family of related names that can all look similar in records, making early tracing tricky because Park, Parkes, Parks, and Parkins may overlap in some lines.
From the historical record
“n^ol^f^ I I genit., and pi., of Park(e, q.v. PARKS J 2 occ. contr. of Parkins, q.v. Cp. Perk(e)8. PARKHILL (Eng.) Bel. to Parkhill (Yorks, Aberdeen, etc.) = the Park-Hill [v. Park and Hill]”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)