Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from a place in the parish of Ormskirk, Lancashire called Aspinwall (also Asmall), from an Old English word æspen ‘growing with aspen trees’ + wæll(a) ‘stream’. There has probably also been some confusion with another Lancashire habitational surname, Aspinhalgh, the second element of which is Old English halh ‘nook’.
- According to Einar Haugen, the Norwegian family name Asbjørnsen has been assimilated to Aspinwall in America.
- Peter Aspinwall was one of the four thousand Puritans who followed the Pilgrim Fathers to New England in 1630. He settled in Brookline, MA.
