Langdon

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A surname of English origin often used as a family name or given name, sometimes associated with fictional characters in literature and media
2. A proper noun identifying individuals, frequently appearing in historical and cultural contexts as a last name or first name
3. A name commonly used to denote people in English-speaking regions, occasionally found in novels and popular stories as a character designation

Etymology: Langdon is a place-name surname, built from two Old English elements: "lang", meaning "long", and "dun", meaning "hill". A family that took its name from a long hill, or from a farm sitting on one, would have been identified by that feature of the landscape, and over the centuries such locative names hardened into hereditary surnames that travelled far from their original villages. The word is a compound with no hidden layers. "Dun" survives in English mainly through place-names such as Brent Knoll or Lincoln's neighbouring hills, where the same element marks a rise in the ground, and the "lang" half carries its plain modern sense. Nothing in the name's construction points to a person, event or invention behind it. Its later life as a given name and as the name of fictional characters grew out of its use as a surname. Readers of popular fiction and film will recognise it most readily from Robert Langdon, the symbologist created by Dan Brown, which has done more to fix the name in public memory than its medieval origins ever did.