Family name origins & meanings
- English : from northern Middle English Spragge, either a personal name or a byname meaning ‘lively’, a metathesized and voiced form of Spark 1.
- William Sprague came from England to Salem, MA, in 1628 with his brothers Ralph and Richard. He was one of the founders of Charlestown, MA, and later of Hingham, MA. His descendants include Peleg Sprague, a jurist and MA legislator, who was born in 1793 in Duxbury, MA; William Sprague a textile manufacturer born in 1773 in Cranston, RI; and Yale College educator Homer Baxter Sprague, who was born in 1829 in South Sutton, MA, and whose legacy lives on in Yale’s Sprague concert hall.