Kerby Family Name and Heraldry

Arms linked to Kirby and its spellings were granted to individual families; our heraldry team traces which line they belonged to.

Family name meaning

Whether you spell it Kerby or Kirby, the story begins in the same place. Name scholars give the meaning as “Church settlement”.

The two spellings differ in a small detail: Kerby has “e” where Kirby has “i”. Regional accents shaped spellings long before dictionaries fixed them. You may also find the name written Kirkby and Kirkbey. The 2010 census count for Kerby in the United States was 4,345, good for rank 7,643. That puts it among the top 10,000 US surnames.

Get the complete Kerby report, with a museum-style coat of arms.