Witherby Family History

The variant of Weatherby (1) suggests that some early bearers in SE England could alternatively belong at (2). In E Anglia, it perhaps represents an altered form of the Middle English surname Witherpin, which has been attested in Norfolk since the 13th century and was later re-interpreted as a locative name ending in -by.

Witherpin appears to consist of Middle English witheren, meaning ‘to resist’, wither relating to ‘hostility, violence, adversity, combat, battle’, or wither in the sense of ‘opposite, adverse, fierce, hostile, contrary’, combined with Middle English pin, which denotes ‘pin, peg (of wood or metal), nail, bolt, spike’.

The sense of the compound is unclear; however, it may be interesting to compare it with Witherspoon, which apparently originated as a name for a quarrelsome person.