Family name origins & meanings
- English (Yorkshire) : habitational name from a place in Yorkshire, recorded in Domesday Book as Schipwic, from Old English scēap, scīp ‘sheep’ + wīc ‘outlying settlement’. Under later Scandinavian influence the initial ‘s’ became ‘sk’ and the second element was changed to -with (Old Norse viðr ‘wood’).
- The main Skipwith family held the manor of Skipwith in England in the early Middle Ages, and direct descendants can be traced to the present day. In the 13th century they moved from Yorkshire to Lincolnshire, where their principal seat was at southern Ormsby. In the early 17th century there was further migration, to Leicestershire, Warwickshire, and across the Atlantic to VA. Other bearers of the name seem to have been tenants of Lincolnshire manors held by the Skipworth family, and to have taken the surname of their overlords.