Biographies

History of the
Stanbery Name

The name Stanbery/Stanberry is classified as an English surname belonging to the Place Name classification. As a surname it may have meant one who came from a place named Stanbery since names of places in England existed well before the development of hereditary surnames. The meaning of the name itself, however, is "stone fortress or manor house." If the name developed independently of an established community named Stanbery, the meaning would be "dweller in a stone fortress or manor house."

The name is a compound of the Old English "stan" meaning "stone" and the suffix "berry" or "bery/bury" from the old English "burh" meaning fort. The suffix is a common one in many languages. In Dutch it appears as "borg." The old Norse word was "bjorg" and the German form was "burg." The English forms include "berry, bury, burgh and borough." Many English surnames have one of these endings.

Many Stanberrys are found in Devonshire, England where there is a "hundred" called Stanborough. A "hundred" is a division between a parish (or a township) and a county. The name is believed to have indicated the area occupied by one hundred families. The Hundred Rolls of the 13th century were broken down into these divisions and thus received the designation "Hundred Rolls."

The surname also appears in Yorkshire where there is a like-named parish in Silkstone, West Riding.

This article appeared in a newspaper in the 1970s. The author is unknown and its validity is undetermined.