Updated June 9, 2019

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Family name origins & meanings

  • English : from Middle English wild ‘wild’, ‘uncontrolled’ (Old English wilde), hence a nickname for a man of violent and undisciplined character, or a topographic name for someone who lived on a patch of overgrown uncultivated land.
  • English : habitational name from a place named Wyld, as for example in Berkshire and Dorset, both named from Old English wil ‘trap’, ‘snare’.
  • German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) : cognate of 1, from Middle High German wilde, wilt, German wild ‘wild’, also used in the sense ‘strange’, ‘foreign’, and therefore in some cases a nickname for an incomer.