Family name origins & meanings
- English : from Middle English delf ‘excavation’, ‘digging’ (Old English (ge)delf), hence a topographic name for someone who lived by a ditch or quarry, a metonymic occupational name for a ditch-cutter or quarryman, or alternatively a habitational name from any of various places named with this word, as for example Delf in Kent and Delph in Lancashire (now Greater Manchester) and Yorkshire.