Given name & surname · also Middle English
Lancaster
“town”
Lancaster is a surname from Middle English, ultimately from Old English.
Meaning & origin
Where it comes from
Lancaster comes from Middle English, and ultimately from Old English.
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The story
Published U.S. birth records include this spelling as early as 1930. This is the earliest published observation available here, rather than a date for the name’s origin.
From dated birth records
Lancaster through the years
- Babies since 1880
- 5
- 5 boys · 0 girls
- Most popular year
- 1930
- 5 babies
- 2025
- 0
- Outside the ranked list
- 2021–25 vs 2016–20
- —
- Too few births to compare
By the numbers
The most recent published U.S. birth count for boys is 5 in 1930. Later missing counts do not mean the name went unused. Published U.S. population figures for this spelling include 99 as a first name in 2020; 31,286 as a surname in 2020.
From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.
Lancaster’s family of names
In English usage, Lancaster as a surname has a conventional equivalent in the Greek form Λάνκαστερ. In English usage, Lancaster as a surname has a conventional equivalent in the Russian form Ланкастер.
Inner ring: nicknames and forms · outer: across languages.
Nicknames & forms 1
Diminutives, pet forms, short forms and variants used alongside the name.
Across languages 2
Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.
People named Lancaster
Listed by how widely each person is written about, which says nothing about the name itself.
Similar names
If you love Lancaster, these share its style, era, origin or sound, from outside its own family.
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