Subscribe >
Help
Member Login
Username Password (Forgot?)
Family Tree
Look up another surname
The bishop Surname

bishop Name Meaning and History

English: from Middle English biscop, Old English bisc(e)op ‘bishop’, which comes via Latin from Greek episkopos ‘overseer’. The Greek word was adopted early in the Christian era as a title for an overseer of a local community of Christians, and has yielded cognates in every European language: French évêque, Italian vescovo, Spanish obispo, Russian yepiskop, German Bischof, etc. The English surname has probably absorbed at least some of these continental European cognates. The word came to be applied as a surname for a variety of reasons, among them service in the household of a bishop, supposed resemblance in bearing or appearance to a bishop, and selection as the ‘boy bishop’ on St. Nicholas’s Day.

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
Learn the meaning and history of your first name
Share this page with friends and family

14–Day Free Trial

Download the Getting Started guide
It's FREE with registration!

bishop Family Facts

Distribution of bishop Families in the US in 1920
Number of bishop families
 687-1372
 230-686		 1-229
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com.au from the 1920 US Federal Census records

Click on a state to view bishop census records

Year

How is this helpful?

  • You can decide where (in which states) to start searching for bishop records.
  • You can see how bishop families moved over time by selecting different Census years.

What do I do next?

The information for this map came from Ancestry.com.au’s US Federal Census Collection.
  • Census records can tell you little-known facts about your ancestors such as birthplace, residence and occupation.
  • Click here to search bishop census records.

Search for bishop records

Hide AdvancedShow AdvancedClear Form

Search

Name

Birth

e.g. 16 Jan 1923
+/-
e.g. Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Death

e.g. 16 Jan 1923
+/-
e.g. Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Give priority to    

Only records from Australia and the UK

More resources for your bishop family history

Start your FREE family tree. Who will you discover?

A family tree is the easiest way to start discovering your family history. To begin, just enter whatever you know and we'll use that to try and find more information for you.

Begin your family tree with your name:

Learn more about family trees.

Member Connections

More Tools and Resources