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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : habitational name from Marksbury in Somerset (now Avon), which was named in Old English either as ‘Mǣrec’s or Mearc’s stronghold’ (from an Old English male personal name + burh ‘stronghold’, ‘fortified place’, dative byrig), or as ‘stronghold on a boundary’ (from mearc ‘boundary’, possibly a reference to the Wansdyke, + burh, byrig).

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