Pendergrass
A surname usually treated as a spelling variant of Pendergast, most likely of Irish origin.
The #4,378 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 38,009 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Historical surname writers usually group Pendergrass with Pendergast and related spellings. The name is generally explained from an Irish place-name or Gaelic family name tradition, though the exact path into the Pendergrass spelling is not fully settled in the older sources. Harrison specifically links the cluster to Pendle/Pendle Hill in Lancashire, but that explanation is not the standard one for the surname as a whole and may reflect confusion with a different family name.
History
In older records, Pendergrass appears as one of several variant spellings alongside Pendergast, Pendergest, and Prendergast. The name is found in Britain and later in the United States, where the Pendergrass spelling became established in some lines. The 19th- and early-20th-century references also show it as a recognized surname in English-language records, not just an isolated misspelling.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Early surname indexes often shelved Pendergrass right next to Pendergast, reflecting how unstable spelling could be in parish and civil records.
From the historical record
“PENDERGAST PENDERGEST PENDERGRASS PENDERGRAST PENDLE. Bel. to Pendle(Hill) (Lanes), A.D. 1294 PennetAlle, 14th cent. Penhil, Penhul [the second element is O.E. hyll, a hill ; the hill being over 1800 feet high, the first element is rather the Cymric pen/s. head, height, than O.E. penn, ah animal-enclo- sure]…”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)