Hamm
A surname that usually comes from an old word for an enclosure, dwelling place, or riverside meadow.
The #1,314 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 11,552 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Hamm is most often traced to an old Germanic place-word meaning an enclosed piece of land, a river meadow, or a hemmed-in settlement site. In English use, it is closely related to Old English hamm, which could mean a nook of land, a water-meadow, or an enclosed holding. In German surnames, it can also be linked to place-names containing Hamm, from the same broad idea of an enclosed or bounded place.
History
The surname may have arisen independently in more than one area, especially in English- and German-speaking regions, from people identified by residence near a place called Hamm or by a landscape feature with that name. In English records, names with -ham and -hamm often became fixed hereditary surnames during the Middle Ages. The modern surname is found in several spellings and may reflect either direct topographic naming or a shortened form of longer names beginning with Hamm-.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Old English hamm is one reason so many English place-names end in -ham or contain similar-looking forms, though not every -ham surname has the same origin.
From the historical record
“At the New Enclosure, or Residence, or Estate [A.-Sax. dat. form ' set Niwan- , kam(me,' i. niwe and (i) hamm, a piece of land,, enclosure, messuage; (2) ham, dwelling, estate] NEWPORT (Eng.) Bel. to Newport = i the”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)Notable people named Hamm
Sourced from Wikidata; linked to their Wikipedia page.