Seward

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A surname borne by people such as William Seward ; a town on the coast of Alaska named after him
2. Family name of the American statesman William Seward ; a port city in southern Alaska on Resurrection Bay
3. A surname associated with the nineteenth-century Secretary of State William Seward ; an Alaskan coastal town that shares his name

Etymology: "Seward" is a name with two separate origins that happened to converge on the same spelling. The first comes from Old English "Siġeweard," built from "sige" meaning "victory" and "weard" meaning "guard" or "keeper," so the name meant something like "victory-guardian." It was a common personal name in Anglo-Saxon England, and the Norman-era form "Siward" carried it forward into Middle English. The name Siward was borne by an eleventh-century Earl of Northumbria, and the surname descends from this name. The second origin is far more literal. Old English "sǣweard" combines "sǣ," meaning "sea," with "weard," meaning "guard," and it denoted a keeper or guardian of the coast. Over the Middle English period, this word and the personal name drifted together in form, so that a modern reader meeting "Seward" as a surname or a place name cannot tell from the spelling alone which strand it belongs to.