Where the Chapman name comes from

Chapman is an English surname that began as an occupational name for a merchant. It comes from the Old English céapmann, meaning a marketman or monger, built on the verb céapan, to buy or sell, and the noun ceap, meaning barter or business. The name also appears as Caepmon, Cepeman, Chepmon, Cypman and Shapman. By 1600 a chapman had come to mean a travelling dealer in particular, and a 1553 decree under Edward VI barred any petty chapman from wandering about from the town unless licensed by two Justices of the Peace.

The same root gave English the word cheap, a shortening of good ceap, meaning a good buy, and Cheapside, a market street in London. British slang chap, meaning a man, grew out of the shortened word, first used for a customer to bargain with. Its cognates run through the Germanic languages, including the German surname Kaufmann and Copenhagen, first named Køpmannæhafn, the merchants' harbour.