Nickname
Lamb surname meaning
An English nickname surname from lamb, for a gentle or meek person, with occasional sign-name routes.
The short story
Lamb is an English nickname surname from the animal name lamb. It could describe a person viewed as gentle, meek, or mild, using the animal as a comparison rather than recording literal sheep ownership. In some records Lamb may also come from a house or inn sign showing a lamb, and German Lamm has related but separate histories. Lambe and Lamm are comparison forms whose spelling does not settle the route. The surname’s main English clue is descriptive and could arise independently in many communities. Nickname is the catalog type, with high confidence in that core meaning.
Also seen as: Lam, Lambe, Lamm
Sources used
- Ancestry surname meaning for Lamb citing DAFN 2022 (lamb nickname and sign-name routes)
- Wikipedia “Lamb (surname)” (English nickname history)
- Names2020_LastNames_RaceHispanic_Top1000.xlsx (2020 Census)
- US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Last Names in the 2020 Census by Race and Hispanic Origin: Top 1,000 (Names2020_LastNames_RaceHispanic_Top1000.xlsx), released April 2026