Family name origins & meanings
- English (Devon) : habitational name, probably from Morecombelake in Dorset (recorded as Mortecumbe in 1240). The second element of this is Old English cumb ‘short valley’, ‘combe’ (see Coombe); the first is probably either an Old English personal name, Morta (see Mort) or mort ‘young salmon or similar fish’. The surname is not from Morecambe in Lancashire, which is an 18th-century coinage, based on identification of Morecambe Bay with Morikambē ‘great gulf’ in the work of the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy.