Family name origins & meanings
- English : topographic name for someone who lived by a pasture for cattle or at a dairy farm, or a habitational name from a place named Butterfield (for example in West Yorkshire), from Old English butere ‘butter’ + feld ‘open country’.
- Benjamin Butterfield came to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638. John Butterfield (1801–69) was born in Berne, NY, and founded an express company that merged with other companies to form the American Express Company (1850).