Wald
A surname with two common roots: either “wood” or the older Germanic idea of “power” or “rule.”
The #8,172 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 76,102 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Wald can be explained in more than one way. In some Germanic surname traditions it is linked to a word for “wood” or “forest,” from forms like German Wald and related Scandinavian and Old English vocabulary. In other cases it may reflect the older Germanic root meaning “power,” “might,” or “rule,” the same element found in names such as Oswald and Reginald.
History
19th-century surname writers did not agree on a single origin for Wald, and the name was sometimes treated as either topographic or as a shortened form of longer Germanic personal names. In English records, related forms could also overlap with names built from the same elements, which makes some family lines hard to separate cleanly. As a modern surname, Wald is also found in German- and Jewish-American contexts.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The same Germanic element behind Wald can mean either a forest or the idea of authority, depending on the linguistic tradition being discussed.
From the historical record
“Walecote in Domesday-Bk. WALD (Teut.) Power, Might [f. O.E. ge)w{e)ald = O.Sax. ^z)aiaM=Q.N. uald = Goth, wald- =O.H.Ger. gi)walt] Wald occurs as a royal name in "Wi'dsitS' (1. 61). 'Wealda presbyter' wit- nessed a charter dated a.d. 904. The mod. Norweg. Vald (cp, O.N. vald-r, ruler) sometimes weakens to Vail.”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)Notable people named Wald
- George Wald (1906–1997)
Sourced from Wikidata; linked to their Wikipedia page.