Sedgwick

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A surname borne by various notable people, including American literary theorists and British scientists ; a small village in the English county of Cumbria
2. A family name carried by several well-known figures in literature and geology ; a settlement in Cumbria, northwest England, near the Lake District
3. The surname of a number of prominent people across scholarship and science ; the name of a hamlet situated in the Cumbria region of northwestern England

Etymology: Sedgwick is a place-name surname that began as a description of a farm. Its first element is "Sicges," the genitive form of the Old English personal name Sicg, meaning "of Sicg." The second element, "wīċ," meant a dairy farm, a sense it carried in Old English as a place where cattle were kept for milk and cheese. Put together, the name roughly means "Sicg's dairy farm," naming the settlement after the person who owned or founded it. Names built this way were common in medieval England, where many villages and farmsteads took the name of an early holder. The surname is simply that place name passed on to the families who lived there. Because the word "wīċ" also survives in many English place names ending in "-wich" or "-wick," Sedgwick belongs to a large group of names that share the same dairy-farm origin.