Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from any of the numerous places, for example in Cambridgeshire, Essex, Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Shropshire, and Suffolk, so called from Old English stōw, a word akin to stoc (see Stoke), with the specialized meaning ‘meeting place’, frequently referring to a holy place or church. Places in Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, and Staffordshire having this origin use the spelling Stowe, but the spelling difference cannot be relied on as an indication of locality of origin. The final -e in part represents a trace of the Old English dative inflection.
- Americanized form of various like-sounding Jewish surnames.
- A John Stowe settled in Roxbury, MA, and took the freeman’s oath in 1634.