Family name origins & meanings
- English (chiefly Norfolk) : habitational name from any of several places called Dunham, of which one is in Norfolk. Most are named from Old English dūn ‘hill’ + hām ‘homestead’. A place in Lincolnshire now known as Dunholme appears in Domesday Book as Duneham and this too may be a source of the surname; here the first element is probably the Old English personal name Dunna.
- John Dunham (1590–1668) was a Puritan linen weaver who came to Plymouth, MA, via Leiden, Netherlands, in 1633. He had many prominent descendants.