Davenport surname meaning

Davenport is an English habitational surname from Davenport in Cheshire. The place-name is traditionally analyzed with Old English or related elements for a stream and a port, landing, or market town: a place associated with a watercourse leading to a port. The surname originally identified someone from that locality, not someone who operated every kind of port. Davenporte and other historical spellings occur in records. The catalog uses place with high confidence, while remembering that a later family’s American or colonial history may have carried the name far from Cheshire.