The surmname Lamb is of English origin. It was a nickname for a meek and inoffensive person. The word nickname is derived from “an eke-name” or added name, and since surnames originated as added names for help in identification, all surnames are, in a sense, nicknames. The name may also be a menonymic occupational name for a keeper of lambs, from Middle English, Old English ‘lamb’. It may also have been a habitational name for someone who lived at a house distinguished by the sign of the paschal lamb, though surnames derived from house signs are less common in England than in Germany and central Europe. The name may also be a short form of the given name Lambert; composed of the Germanic elements ‘land’, land, territory and ‘berht’, bright, famous. A native Old English name ‘Landbeorht’ is attested, and seems to have survived the Norman Conquest, when it was massively reinforced by the Continental form imported by the Normans from France. The name gained even wider currency in the Middle Ages with the immigration of weavers from Flanders, where St.Lambert, bishop of Maastricht in the seventh century, who a…
Coat of arms: Argent a chevron engraile…