Chevy Chase
Who had this name first: the actor or the city in Maryland?
Neither. Both the actor and the city were named (indirectly) for a medieval English hunting ground.
The actor, who was born in 1943, is actually named Cornelius Chase. “Chevy” is a childhood nickname. (Apparently, he was also indirectly named after the English land, not the city.)
The city in Maryland was named in the late 1800s.
Which brings us to the patch of land in England: the Cheviot Hills.
This is located in the northern part of England – just a mile or so south of Scotland – and is named for The Cheviot, its highest elevation (just 2,600 ft. in elevation; which, for England, is relatively high). Its name comes from an ancient Celtic word for “ridge-like.” The same name has been used for various other elevations around the world.
(For example: there is a neighborhood in Los Angeles called “Cheviot Hills.” According to Google’s terrain mapping, it is clearly positioned on a ridge. It is home to the Hillcrest Country Club.)
The Cheviot Hills (in England) were used for hunting. The word “chase” has often been used to describe hunting grounds, therefore the land became colloquially known as “Chevy Chase.”
This was immortalized in a creative work entitled “The Ballad of Chevy Chase.” It describes a battle in that area in the 1400s between the English and the Scottish. It’s this work that the actor’s grandmother supposedly used as inspiration for his nickname.
(Here is a man reciting the ballad for more than 10 minutes – it’s like a very long poem in Old English, presumably set to music.)
The name then jumped over to North America in 1890 when a land developer created The Chevy Chase Land Company (which still exists today), presumably named for the legendary ballad, as that was likely the only usage of the term at that time. The company developed several villages in Maryland that were designed as all-white communities (the founder was an outspoken white supremacist).
Why I Looked It Up
The place name came up in a book about the Bush family, and I realized that I had always wondered about the relationship to the actor’s name.