Beckford

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The eighteenth-century English author who wrote the Gothic novel Vathek ; a small village in Worcestershire in the English Midlands
2. An English writer of the Gothic era, famed for the novel Vathek ; a rural village located in the county of Worcestershire, England
3. A surname of the 18th-century English author of Vathek ; a settlement in Worcestershire in the West Midlands of England

Etymology: Beckford is a surname, and the word in this sense names William Beckford, the eighteenth-century English novelist whose gothic tale "Vathek" made him famous. The surname itself is built from two Old English elements: the personal name Becca, and "ford," meaning a place where a river could be crossed on foot. So the family name began as a description of a place, a crossing kept by or associated with a man called Becca. Many English surnames built on place names followed this pattern, with a personal name prefixed to a topographical term to label where a family lived or held land. The name therefore carries no meaning about novels or gothic fiction; those associations came entirely from the man who bore it.