Family name origins & meanings
- English : topographic name from Old English hamm, denoting a patch of flat, low-lying alluvial land beside a stream (often a promontory or water meadow in a river bend), or a habitational name from any of numerous places named with this word, for example in Gloucestershire, Greater London, Kent, Somerset, and Wiltshire.
- German : topographic name for someone who lived on land in a river bend, Old High German ham (see 1 above).
- German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) : habitational name from Hamm, a city in Westphalia.