Family name origins & meanings
- English : topographic name for someone who lived by an orchard, or a metonymic occupational name for a fruit grower, from Middle English orchard.
- English : habitational name from any of the places called Orchard. Those in Devon and Somerset are named from Old English ortgeard, orceard (a compound of wort, wyrt ‘plant’ (later associated with Latin hortus ‘garden’) + geard ‘yard’, ‘enclosure’), while East and West Orchard near Shaftesbury in Dorset have a different origin, ‘(place) beside the wood’, from Celtic ar + cēd.
- Scottish : English surname adopted as equivalent of Urquhart.