Weed
An English surname that may come from a place-name, but in older scholarship it was also linked to words for a ford or a weed-like plant.
The #4,442 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 38,656 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname has been explained in more than one way. One old proposal connects it with a Frisian form, while another, more tentative, treats it as the same as Wade and therefore related to a ford or crossing-place. Because the evidence is thin and the forms are short and easily confused, the true origin is not certain.
History
The name appears in English surname collections as an established family name by the 19th century. Some older writers treated Weed as a variant or parallel to Wade, while others grouped it with place-name surnames. Modern users are most likely to encounter it as a straightforward hereditary surname rather than a transparent descriptive word.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
19th-century surname writers were not fully agreed on this name, so Weed is a good example of how short surnames can produce surprisingly tricky etymologies.
From the historical record
“WEDLOCK. The same as Wedlake. WEED. There is a Friesic Weda; but Weed is more pro- bably the same as Wade, in H. R. De Wade and De la Wade, and = Ford. WEEK, WEEKES, WEEKS. From Week, name of parishes cos. Cornwall, Hants, and Somerset. WEEKLY. See LEGG. WEINGOTT. The same as the U. S. name Wingood, the inverse of…”
— Ludus Patronymicus; or, the etymology of curious surnames