Snape Family History

English: habitational name from Middle English snap (Old Norse snap) ‘poor pasture or winter pasture’. Of the many minor placenames containing this word in northern England, it was most probably Snape in Ormskirk (Lancashire), Snape in Well (North Yorkshire), or Snape in Sowerby (Yorkshire) that gave rise to the surname.

From Middle English snap snep (Old English snæp) possibly meaning ‘boggy piece of land’. This may be the source of Snape in Suffolk and of numerous minor places called Snap or Snape in Cheshire, Devon, Nottinghamshire, Sussex, and Wiltshire, but it is difficult to tell this apart from the word in the previous definition.

Snape (Farm) in Weston (Cheshire) is the likely source of the surname in Staffordshire, while one or other of the Sussex places gave rise to the Sussex surname Snepp. In Sussex, the dialect term snape is still used to denote an area of boggy, uncultivable land.