Stockdale
A northern English place-name surname meaning “valley of the tree-stump” or “valley by the stump.”
The #7,717 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 71,785 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Stockdale is a locational surname from a place-name in northern England, especially associated with Yorkshire and nearby counties. The first element is stock, from Old English stoc(c) or Old Norse stokk-r, meaning a stump, trunk, or log; the second is dale, from Old English dæl, meaning valley. Taken together, the name most likely meant a valley marked by a tree-stump or log, though older writers sometimes treated it simply as a local place-name without a firmly identified exact spot.
History
The surname was already in use in northern England by the 16th and 17th centuries and appears in records from places such as Lancashire and York. It later spread beyond its original northern core and is now found more widely in English-speaking countries, including the United States. 19th-century surname writers noted it as a fairly familiar northern name.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some early surname compilers thought the underlying place-name was hard to pin down exactly, even while agreeing it was distinctly northern.
From the historical record
“STOCK DALE (Ena and Scand.) Bel. to Stockdale (yorks, Westmd., etc.) = the Tree-Stump Valley [O.E. stoc(c = O.N. stokk-r, a tree-stump, trunk, log -|- O.E.”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)