Updated June 9, 2019

Find Baby Names

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : of uncertain origin, perhaps, as Reaney suggests, from a pet form of the Old English personal name Wippa, or perhaps a topographic name for someone who lived by a whipple tree, whatever that may have been. Chaucer lists whippletree (probably a kind of dogwood) along with maple, thorn, beech, hazel, and yew.
  • Matthew Whipple came from England to Ipswich, MA, in about 1638. His descendent William Whipple (1730–85) born in Kittery, ME, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.