Explore the Family Name Delafield

The meaning of Delafield

1. English (London and Devon) and Irish: of Anglo-Norman origin, a habitational name, probably for someone from Field in Leigh (Staffordshire), named with Old English feld ‘expanse of open land’. It was evidently known originally as ‘The Field’, whence the partly Anglo-Norman French rendering of the surname as de la Feld ‘of The Field’. In the 15th century in Ireland this surname was increasingly used in its shortened form Field, but a branch of the family that had moved back to England in the 14th century retained the French prefix. 2. English (North Yorkshire): in North Yorkshire the name seems to have a different origin from 1 above. It could be a nickname from Middle English dil(e) ‘dull, stupid’ + Middle English ful, foul ‘bird’ (wild or domestic), but the absence of evidence for a Middle English surname with this compound leaves the explanation uncertain. Alternatively, it might be a name altered by folk etymology, of Delavale, the surname of an aristocratic family, which from the 11th century held Callerton and Seaton Delaval (in Earsdon on the Northumberland border). The family came from La Val in Marne, France, and the surname itself is a variant of Laval, with fused preposition de. History: The Devon surname (see 1 above) descends from the Buckinghamshire family of this name, whose late 14th-century progenitor, William de la Felde, was born in Ireland and was probably a descendant of Richard de (la) Felde, a high-ranking Anglo-Norman from the time of Henry II. The medieval Anglo-Irish family had social connections in Ireland with the de Pinkeny family of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire (see Pinkney) and with the de Verdun family of Staffordshire and Buckinghamshire (see Verdon), and gave its name to Fieldstown, near Dublin. In the early 18th century one branch of the Buckinghamshire family moved to Plympton Erle (Devon). The main branch had a leather business in London, and in 1783 John Delafield migrated from London to New York, founding the American line of the family.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.