Manor
A surname usually tied to a manor or estate, especially as a locational name for someone who lived by or came from one.
The #9,479 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 89,961 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Manor comes from Middle English and Anglo-Norman use of the word for an estate or landed holding. The ultimate root is Latin manere, “to remain,” which developed through medieval French and Latin legal usage into the sense of a landed residence or lord’s estate. As a surname, it most likely began as a topographic or locational name for someone associated with a manor, rather than as a direct status title.
History
The historical excerpts do not give a dedicated entry for MANOR itself, but they repeatedly use the word in the older sense of an estate or landed holding. Surnames built from places and estates were common in medieval England, especially among people identified by where they lived or by the manor they served. In some cases the name may also reflect later simplification from a fuller place-based surname, so several lines of origin are possible.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
In medieval records, a manor was often much more than a house: it could mean the whole local estate, its tenants, and its legal rights.
From the historical record
“MAINWARING (Fr.-Lat.-Teut.) Bel. to Mes- nilwarin (France) = the Manor of Warin [v. Mennell and Warin] Robert de Meynwaring. — Hund. Rolls. Warin de Menwarin. — Cal- Inq. P.M.”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)