Willoughbys

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Members of the English family bearing the surname Willoughby ; a 2008 comic children's novel by Lois Lowry about four neglected siblings
2. The people belonging to the noble English Willoughby family ; a humorous 2008 children's book by Lois Lowry about unloved young siblings
3. Several bearers of the Willoughby surname collectively ; the title of a 2008 Lois Lowry novel satirizing storybook parents and their wicked children

Etymology: "Willoughbys" is the plural of "Willoughby," a surname, so its history is really the history of a place name that later became a family name. The first element comes from Old English "weliġ," meaning "willow," and the second from Old Norse "byr," meaning "settlement." Put together, the name describes a farmstead or village by the willows, a common pattern for English place names. The Old Norse element is the surprising part. Its presence reflects the Viking settlement of northern and eastern England, where Scandinavian speakers settled in the late ninth and tenth centuries and added "-by" to many place names. Willoughby is one of the places that took this form, and the surname came from people who lived there or came from there. The plural form simply refers to more than one person bearing the name, such as members of the Willoughby family.