Fairfax

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A family name of English origin borne by various notable people ; a county in northern Virginia named after a colonial landowner ; a suburb in Sydney, Australia, and a town in the United States
2. An English surname carried by several historical figures ; a large county in the northern part of the state of Virginia ; a place name also used for a city in Virginia and a Sydney suburb
3. A surname with English roots ; the name of a populous county in northeastern Virginia ; the name of a Virginia city and of a suburb of Sydney in Australia

Etymology: Fairfax is first and foremost a surname, and its meaning is written into its parts: "fair" in the old sense of beautiful, and "fax," a word for hair, especially a head of hair. Put together, the name amounts to "beautiful tresses," the kind of descriptive nickname that medieval English families often took from a notable feature of an ancestor. Surnames of this type were usually coined for a person who was physically striking, and the name then passed down to his descendants regardless of how their own hair looked. The name is best known through the Fairfax family of Yorkshire and Virginia, whose members held estates and offices across several centuries, which is why the word now sounds to most readers like a place or a family rather than a description. Its sense has faded from the modern vocabulary, so the surname stands as a fossil of older English: a phrase of praise that outlived the ordinary words it was built from.