Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from a place in Leicestershire, recorded in Domesday Book as Cilebi. It was probably originally named with the Old English elements cild (see Child) + tūn ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’. Compare Chilton. The second element was then replaced some time after the Danish invasions by the Old Norse form býr.
- Christopher Kilby (1705–71), merchant and government contractor of the colonial era, was born in Boston, MA, as was his father, John. According to family tradition, his grandfather John was born in 1632 in Hertfordshire, England.