Marsh (surname)

Marsh is an English surname. In most cases it is a topographic or locative name from the Old English word mersc ("marsh, fen, wetland"), denoting someone who lived by a marsh or fen, or who came from one of the many minor places called Marsh.[1][2] In a smaller number of cases the surname is of Anglo-Norman origin, from del Mareis or the Latinized de Marisco ("of the marsh").[2]

Etymology and origin

The principal source of the surname is the Old English common noun mersc (later Middle English mersh, marsh), meaning marsh, fen or low-lying wetland. As a topographic surname it was applied to a person who lived beside such ground; as a locative name it identified someone who had come from one of the numerous settlements named Marsh — found in Yorkshire, Shropshire, Buckinghamshire and elsewhere — several of which take their own names from the same word.[1][2] Middle English forms of the surname commonly appear with the locative prepositions del or atte ("of the", "at the"), as in del Mersh and atte Mersh.[2]

A separate, minority strand is of Anglo-Norman derivation, from Old French mareis, marais ("marsh"), appearing in medieval records in the Latinized form de Marisco ("of the marsh"). Bearers recorded under this form may descend from Norman families, though the native English origin accounts for the majority of the name.[2]

The surname Marsh should not be confused with the distinct surname March, which derives from a different root — Old English mearc or Old French marche ("boundary, border"), as in the Welsh Marches. The two surnames were treated as equivalent in some older reference works, but modern onomastic scholarship keeps them separate.[2][1]

People

Fictional

References

  1. 1 2 3 Hanks, Patrick; Coates, Richard; McClure, Peter (2016). "Marsh". The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Reaney, P. H.; Wilson, R. M. (1997). "Marsh". A Dictionary of English Surnames (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.
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