I was given my first name in honor of my dad’s high school best friend, a guy whose last name was “Hatfield” (and yes, he was distantly related to the Hatfields of Hatfield vs. McCoy fame). So it caught my eye when I spotted the German surname, “Hatzfeldt”, while reading about the 30 Years War.
Did “Hatfield” morph from “Hatzfeldt”? Wikipedia is no help; it just says it’s an Anglo-Saxon name and lists a bunch of notable people with the name. Kind of disappointing, because Wikipedia gave a nice etymology of my own last name. Had I not already changed my username here once, I’d switch to “God Bear” in a heartbeat.
The Surname Database concurs, and gives some etymological derivations. The “hat-” syllable seems to ultimately derive from Old English and/or Old Scandinavian roots meaning “heath” or “heather”. The “-field” part is, well, good ol’ field.
Hatfield in Hertfordshire is the best-known of the places in England called that, mainly because of Hatfield House and the old de Haviland aircraft factory. More relevantly, it was quite important during the period when surnames were becoming fixed because it was one of the towns on the Great North Road.
But unsurprisingly, given the etymology, it’s not the only place in the UK called that. Running the surname through website such as this one indicates that it is concentrated in Yorkshire. That rather suggests that, at least in the UK, it more often derives from the Hatfield near Doncaster.