Sundberg
A Scandinavian surname meaning “mountain by the sound” or “sea mountain,” usually understood as a Swedish-style place-name surname.
The #7,912 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 73,845 Americans shares it.
Etymology
This surname is built from Scandinavian place-name elements: sund, meaning a sound, strait, or narrow waterway, and berg, meaning hill or mountain. Taken together, the name points to someone living near a hill or mountain by a strait, or to a place called Sundberg. The old excerpt’s “floating mountain” explanation reflects an older folk-style gloss rather than the more standard modern reading.
History
Sundberg is a well-established Swedish surname and place-name type, and it fits the common Scandinavian pattern of taking a name from local geography. It became more widely encountered in North America through Swedish immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The surname is especially associated with Swedish-American communities.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Because berg can mean both “hill” and “mountain,” the name can sound more dramatic in English than it would have felt in Swedish to its earliest bearers.
From the historical record
“disguise the origin of names. Sundberg. Sicnd, floating ; beorg, a mountain. A floating mountain ; an iceberg. Sunderland. Sunder, sunder, separate, different ; laiid, land. A separate land ; a land that has been sundered, from sundrian, to sunder, or separated.”
— Family Names from the Irish, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman and Scotch