Guilford

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A market town in Surrey, England, known for its historic cathedral and university ; a town on the coast of Connecticut in the United States ; a county in North Carolina in the United States ; a family name borne by various notable people
2. A historic English town in Surrey with a well-known university ; a coastal Connecticut town in the eastern United States ; a North Carolina county in the southeastern United States ; a surname carried by several people of note
3. An English town in the county of Surrey famed for its university and cathedral ; a seaside community in Connecticut ; an American county in North Carolina ; a last name associated with various notable individuals

Etymology: Guilford is best known as the name of a historic town in Surrey, England, home to a well-known university, but the name is also carried by a coastal town in Connecticut and a county in North Carolina, and by several notable people. The place-name it shares with the Surrey town is an old English formation: "guild" combined with "ford," meaning a crossing place on a river that a guild or community used or maintained. The Connecticut and North Carolina places took the name when English settlers carried it across the Atlantic, and the spelling still echoes the Surrey original. The form given here is a variant of that same name, so it points to the same two elements. Its differences in spelling are simply the variant spellings that the English place-name tradition produced over the centuries, and the word has stayed attached to its original sense of a ford.