Kamp Family History

Dutch and German: from Low German kamp ‘enclosed, fenced, or hedged piece of land’, ‘field’ (from Latin campus ‘plain’), hence a topographic name for someone who lived by a field. Dutch: from Middle Low German kampe ‘warrior’, ‘combatant’, applied as a nickname or an occupational name, or from a Germanic personal name based on this element. Compare German Kampe, Kampf. Dutch: metonymic occupational name for a hemp grower, from Middle Dutch kanep ‘hemp’. South German: from the Austrian dialect word Kamp ‘comb’, hence a metonymic occupational name for a comb maker or a wool comber, or a topographic name for a mountain dweller, from the same word in the sense ‘mountain ridge’. Compare Kamm.

Source: Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013, Oxford University Press