Ferris
An English and Irish surname usually understood as a form of Ferrers or related to the word for a blacksmith/ironworker.
The #1,732 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 14,913 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Ferris has been explained in more than one way by historical surname writers. Some treated it as a reduced or altered form of Ferrers, a name ultimately connected with Old French ferreor or ferreus, “ironworker” or “of iron.” Others linked it with farrier, the horse-shoer, while one source noted the Welsh word fferis, “steel,” though that looks more like a folk association than a settled derivation.
History
In English records, Ferris appears as a surname alongside Ferrers and related forms, and some writers classed it simply as a variant of those names. The name is also found in Ireland, where it may in some cases reflect an Anglicized or shortened form of an older Gaelic surname, but the historical evidence is mixed and region-specific. Because the 19th-century authorities disagree, modern reference works usually treat Ferris as a surname with several possible origins rather than one single source.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
One old English surname dictionary even linked Ferris with Beer-Ferris in Devon, showing how easily place-names and family names could be confused in early scholarship.
From the historical record
“of Farrier, which see. FERRIS. FERRIES. See Ferrers. FERRY. 1. From residence near one. 2. Possibly however from fer ey, the remote or distant island. 3. Camden says, "For Frederick th' English have commonly used Frery and Fery, which Iiath been now a long time a Cliristiau Jiame in the ancient family of Tilney…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom