Highmore

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A family name borne by people such as the eighteenth-century English painter Joseph Highmore ; a small town in the central United States state of South Dakota
2. Used as a surname, most famously for the English portrait painter Joseph Highmore ; the name of a small community located in South Dakota in the American Midwest
3. A surname associated with the English painter Joseph Highmore ; also the name of a modest town in South Dakota on the northern Great Plains

Etymology: The name is a locational surname, one that originally identified a person by where they lived. It combines Old English "heah," meaning "high," with "mor," meaning "moor" or upland marsh, so the earliest bearers were probably people living on or beside a high moor. Surnames like this were common in England, where many families took their names from farmland, hills, or rough open country. The name is best known through Joseph Highmore, an English painter who illustrated scenes from Samuel Richardson's novel "Pamela." His engravings helped make the family name familiar to readers of the period.