Recorded in several forms including Kingaby, Kingerbie, Kingarby, Kingerby, and others now extinct, this is an English locational surname. It originates for the village of Kingerby near the town of Market Rasen in the county of Lincolnshire, and in recent gazetters was shown to have a population of sixty seven. This suggests that Kingerby, the name means apparently "Royal farm" in Danish, and which was first recorded in the famous Domesday Book of 1086 as Chenebi, is what is known as a "diminished village". This is on the way to being a "lost" village, of which there are known to be some five thousand examples in the British Isles, but not quite! Lincolnshire and East Anglia in general is famed for its lost villages. These occured between the 14th and the 18th centuries when the ancient fenlands were gradually drained, and the inland fishing industry which helped to feed much of the midlands and north of England, was closed down and largely replaced by sheep farming. This required far fewer hands, and therefore many people left their original homes taking or being given as their surname, the name of their former village. The surname is well recorded in Lincolnshire from at least Elizabethan times, and early recordings include Agnes Kingerbie who married Wylliam Browne at Harborough on January 16th 1569, whilst Robert Kingaby was a christening witness at Mumby, on May 15th 1778.

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