VICTORIA YEOMAN

Feminine form of the Latin name Victorius (a derivative of Victor), also perhaps a direct use of Latin victoria ‘victory’. It was little known in England until the accession in 1837 of Queen Victoria (1819–1901), who got it from her German mother, Mary Louise Victoria of Saxe-Coburg. It did not begin to be a popular name among commoners in Britain until the 1940s, reaching a peak in the 1990s.

English and Scottish: 1. status name, from Middle English yoman, yeman, used of an attendant of relatively high status in a noble household, ranking between a Sergeant and a Groom, or between a Squire and a Page. The word appears to derive from a compound of Old English geong ‘young’ + mann ‘man’. Later in the Middle English period it came to be used of a modest independent freeholder, and this latter sense may well lie behind some examples of the surname. 2. topographic name, an expanded form of Yeo.