Stansberry
A surname most likely from a place-name or farm-name meaning “stone berry” or, more plausibly, “stan/stone fort by the barrow or hill.”
The #8,747 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 82,332 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Stansberry is almost certainly an English locational surname, probably arising from a lost or altered place-name. The first element is likely the Old English personal name or word element stan, meaning “stone,” or possibly stan in the sense of a rocky place; the second element is less certain and may reflect a dialectal or altered form of a topographic term such as beorg, “hill, barrow,” or berry/bury, “fortified place, manor, or settlement.” In short, the name appears to point to someone from a stony place or a settlement marked by a hill, mound, or fortification, though the exact original place is uncertain.
History
The spelling has probably been influenced over time by pronunciation and by later surname spelling habits, which can turn older local names into forms like Stansberry, Stansbury, and Stanberry. In English-speaking records, these forms often cluster together because clerks and families shifted between spellings before modern standardization. The surname is found in the United States in relatively modest numbers, suggesting an inherited English family name rather than a very recent coinage.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Stansberry is one of those surnames whose modern spelling may preserve a clue to an older place-name even when the original location no longer survives clearly in records.