Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from a place in West Yorkshire, probably named with the genitive case of the Old English personal name Stān ‘stone’, a byname or short form of any of various compound names with this as the first element (compare, for example, Stammer, Stannard) + Old English feld ‘pasture’, ‘open country’.
- English : alternatively, it may be a topographic name from Middle English stanesfeld ‘open country of the (standing) stone’, with reference to a prominent monolith. There are other places so called, for example in Suffolk, but the distribution suggests that the one in Yorkshire is the source of the surname.