by Cleveland Kent Evans (guest)
9/1/2005, 9:04 AM
Tripp could indeed be a surname transfer. According to Hanks & Hodges's _A Dictionary of Surnames_, Tripp is an English surname that can either be a name for a dancer or someone with an odd way of walking (from Middle English "trippen", to step lightly or skip); or it can be a nickname for a butcher, from the word "tripe."
However, in my experience in the USA, Tripp is actually most often a modern nickname for a man who has the Roman numeral "III" after his name. I went to college with a man who was officially Floyd X III, and he was always called Tripp. Another such nickname is Trey, from the Latin word for three. Trey has become well-used as a given name in the USA, and there's no reason why someone couldn't have also turned the nickname Tripp into a given name for a child.