The English surname Meadows is a topographic name for someone who lived by a meadow. The first recorded record of the name is Henry de la Medewe, which was dated 1280, in the charters of the county of Worcestershire. The name is first recorded in the New World in 1642 when Philip Meadows arrived in Roxbury, Massachusetts from England. Today there are approximately 43,000 bearers of the name Meadows living in the US.