Spalding

Boy name variations

Family name origins & meanings

• English and Scottish : habitational name from a place in Lincolnshire, so called from the Old English tribal name Spaldingas ‘people of the district called Spald’. The district name probably means ‘ditches’, referring to drainage channels in the fenland.
• The surname was taken to Scotland in the 13th century by Radulphus de Spalding. His descendants prospered, and the name is still common in Scotland. Early American Spaldings include Thomas Spalding, born in Frederica, GA, in 1774, who introduced sea-island cotton in GA, and the physician Lyman Spalding, born in Cornish, NH, in 1775, who founded U.S. Pharmacopoeia.