PARISH. This rather shigular name may be thus accounted for. In many parts of the South of England, in country places, the word parish is used, not so much with reference to the parochial district, as to the village immediately adjacent to the church. Hence, at the period when plebeian surnames began, two Johns or two Roberts, residing in the same ecclesiastical parocJiia, might be called respectively, John or Robert at Field, at Moor, at Hill, or what not — or John or Robert "a the Parlslt." Tlie family of this name formerly settled in Lincolnshire, consider it to be a modification of Paris, the Fr. metroi)olis.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.