Boy name origins & meanings
- English : From the march
- Old English : Field near water
Family name origins & meanings
- English (southern Lancashire) : habitational name from a minor place in the parish of Rochdale, named from Old English mere ‘lake’, ‘pool’ + land ‘tract of land’, ‘estate’, ‘cultivated land’. There may also have been some confusion with Markland.
- Dutch : habitational name from Maarland in Eijsden, Dutch Limburg.
- possibly a variant of Dutch Merlan, from French merlan ‘whiting’, a metonymic occupational name for a fisherman or seller of these fish.
