Hamm Family History

English (London): topographic name for someone who lived at a place called from Middle English ham(me) hom(me) (Old English hamm) which meant ‘land in a river bend’ ‘land hemmed in by marshland’ ‘wet land hemmed in by higher ground’ ‘river meadow’ or ‘cultivated plot on the edge of woodland or moor’. The topographic term is found mainly in the South Midlands and southern England.

There are many farmsteads with this name in Devon and Sussex, five more substantial settlements called Ham or Hamp in Somerset, as well as East and West Ham in Essex, and places called Ham in Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Surrey and Wiltshire.

This form of the surname is also comparatively frequent in Ireland. German: topographic name for someone who lived on land in a river bend, Old High German ham (see 1 above).

German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): habitational name from any of numerous places called Hamm, mainly the city in Westphalia.

German: from a short form of the ancient Germanic personal name Hadumar, from hadu ‘combat’ + mari ‘glorious’.