MARY LUND

Originally a Middle English Anglicized form of French Marie, from Latin Maria. This is a New Testament form of Miriam, which St Jerome derives from elements meaning ‘drop of the sea’ (Latin stilla maris, later altered by folk etymology to stella maris ‘star of the sea’). Mary was the name of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, who has been the subject of a cult from earliest times. Consequently, the name was extremely common among early Christians, several saints among them, and by the Middle Ages was well established in every country in Europe at every level of society. It has been in use ever since, its popularity in England having been relatively undisturbed by vagaries of fashion until the 1960s, when it began to decline sharply. In the New Testament, Mary is also the name of several other women: Mary Magdalene (see Madeleine); Mary the sister of Martha, who sat at Jesus's feet while Martha served (Luke 10:38–42; John 11:1–46; 12:1–9) and who came to be taken in Christian tradition as symbolizing the value of a contemplative life; the mother of St Mark (Colossians 4:10); and a Roman matron mentioned by St Paul (Romans 16:6).

Scandinavian, German, and English: topographic name for someone who lived by a grove, Old Norse lundr; the word was adopted into northern dialects of Middle English and also into Anglo-Norman French. There are a number of places in England named with this word, as for example Lund in Lancashire, East Yorkshire, and North Yorkshire, Lunt in Merseyside, and Lound in Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Suffolk, and the surname may derive from any of these. The Swedish surname is probably more usually ornamental. When surnames became obligatory in Sweden in the 19th century, this was one of the most popular among the many terms denoting features of the natural landscape which were adopted as surnames, usually compounded with some other such term.