Beebe

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A proper name borne by people, most notably the American naturalist William Beebe, and also used for a town in Arkansas
2. Used as a family name, as in the naturalist William Beebe, and also as the name of a small American town in Arkansas
3. A surname associated with figures such as the explorer William Beebe, and the name of a place in the state of Arkansas

Etymology: Beebe is a surname, and the only etymological fact I can stand behind is that it is a variant of Beeby. Beeby itself is an English surname of the kind that grew up from place names, typically describing someone who came from or lived near a settlement whose name ended in the Old Norse-derived element "by," meaning farm or village. Surnames of this shape spread through medieval England and were fixed as hereditary family names over the following centuries, which is why many of them survive in several spellings. The spelling with a final "e" does not change the sense. English surname spellings were far from standard for centuries, and clerks recording the same family name in different parishes often wrote it differently. Beebe and Beeby therefore represent one name carried through two spelling traditions rather than two separate words.