Urquhart
A Scottish place-name surname, most famously linked to the old lands of Urquhart in the north of Scotland.
The #7,578 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 70,409 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Urquhart is a habitational surname taken from one of several Scottish places called Urquhart, especially in Moray, Inverness, and Ross. Older scholarship connected the name with an early Gaelic form recorded as Airchartan, and then with a word for “a quarter” or “fourth part,” though this explanation is not entirely certain. The surname therefore probably began as “of Urquhart,” meaning someone from that district.
History
The name is well attested in medieval Scotland, with early forms such as Urchart and Urchard appearing in the records. Historical writers traced one branch of the family to Galleroch de Urchart in the reign of Alexander II, and later descendants became hereditary sheriffs of Cromarty. The name is also associated with Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, the 17th-century scholar and translator known for his eccentric, elaborate pedigree claims.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Sir Thomas Urquhart’s own genealogy was famously extravagant, and later writers treated it as one of the great pieces of playful or invented pedigree-writing.
From the historical record
“Opm(e) -f O.E. tun, farm, etc.] URQUHART (Celt.) Bel. to Urquhart, a fairly common Scot, place - name, occurring 1 2th- 14th cent, as Urchard; but we get the real clue to the meaning of the name from the reference to the Inverness Urquhart in Adamnan's Life of St. Columba (III. xiv.) as Airchartan (with -dn dim.…”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)