Stamps
A surname most likely derived from Etampes, a place-name in France, though some later writers also connected it with “stamps” or marks.
The #4,828 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 42,253 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The best-supported explanation links Stamps to the French place-name Étampes, an old town in northern France. In medieval records, the name appears in forms such as Estampes, and English surname writers often treated Stamps as an altered or Anglicized version of that locational name. A secondary, less certain line of explanation connected the name with words for stamping or marking, but that is weaker in the historical sources here.
History
19th-century surname writers commonly grouped Stamps with other names taken from French place-names that came into England after the Norman period. Charnock explicitly equated Stamp/Stamps with Estampes, and Lower also listed Estampes or Stamps among French-derived surnames. In modern usage, Stamps survives chiefly as an English-language surname and is also found in the United States.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The same root place-name appears in older English surname discussions as both Estampes and Stamps, showing how foreign place-names often shifted into shorter English forms over time.
From the historical record
“an unlikely origin for the name, which is more probably dei'ived fi'om the old Fr. croiseur, one who stamps or marks any- thing with a cross, or perhaps from croise, one who has designated himself with the Christian symbol — a Crusader. CROSS. This nnnie is sufficiently ex-”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom