Loade Family History

Either topographic from Middle English lade ‘river crossing; watercourse’ (Old English gelād ‘difficult river crossing’ or lād ‘canal dyked watercourse’) or possibly toponymic from a place named with one or other of these words such as Lower and Upper Lode in Tewkesbury (Gloucs) Long Load (Somerset) which is recorded as la Lade in 1285 and Load Farm (formerly Lode Farm) in Kingsley (Hants).

Compare Laid which may be of the same origin. Early Middle English spellings with -a- which may be ancestral to Loade are given there.