Frequency: (1993)
(number of times this surname appears in a sample database of 88.7 million names, representing one third of the 1997 US population)
English, Scottish, French, and German: from Middle English, Old French, Middle High German olifant ‘elephant’ (medieval Latin olifantus, from classical Latin elephantus, Greek elephas, genitive elephantos). The circumstances in which this word was applied as a surname are not clear. It may have been a nickname for a large, lumbering individual, or a metonymic occupational name for a worker in ivory, or a habitational name from a house distinguished by the sign of an elephant.
See the Key to the Dictionary or consult the General Introduction for further explanation.
