Kolby

Kolby is a typical American respelling whereby a traditional “C” name is changed to “K”. The name Colby is the transferred use of an old English surname which itself developed from a place name. There are still towns called Colby in Norfolk, Westmorland and Lincolnshire, England. These villages were named Colby to signify the “farmstead or village of a man called Koli”. Koli was an old Nordic nickname Anglo-Saxons borrowed from the Vikings; it signified a person of “swarthy” appearance – in other words, a man with a dark complexion or weather-beaten face. The elements come from the Old Norse “kol” meaning “(char)coal” and “byr” meaning “settlement”. Such towns were either named Colby because they produced coal or because the village was established by some swarthy dude called “Koli”. The first recorded spelling of this surname shows up in the Domesday Book in the 11th century as Colebei. As a given name, Colby has been around for less than 50 years and appears to be mainly used in North America (United States and Canada, specifically). Kolby appeared as an alternate spelling in the mid 1980s.