Walpole
August 1, 2014 § Leave a comment
ORIGIN:
One of those “last names as first names” that were once a quite popular way for a mother’s maiden name to be passed on to her sons, “Walpole” is an old English place name meaning either “pool with a wall” or “pool of the Britons / foreigners”.
VARIATIONS and NICKNAMES:
Wally? Poley?
REFERENCES IN LITERATURE:
– Sir Walpole Crawley, the late first Baronet, was Sir Pitt Crawley’s father in Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray (published in 1847-48, but set in the 1810s-20s).
The Art of Literary Nomenclature 
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