Variant of Kirby, from Old Norse 'kirkju-byr' meaning 'settlement by the church.'
Kerby is a variant spelling of Kirby, a name of Old Norse origin composed of kirkja ("church") and byr ("settlement" or "farm") — meaning, essentially, "settlement by a church." The Norse settlers who swept into northern England during the Viking Age planted this place-name across the Yorkshire Dales and Lancashire, and it survives today in numerous English villages. Like many English place-names that became surnames, Kirby/Kerby eventually crossed the Atlantic and entered American usage as a given name, particularly in the South and Midwest, where surname-as-forename traditions run deep.
As a given name, Kirby — and by extension Kerby — has a distinctly mid-century American feel, associated with the postwar generation of boys given strong, one-syllable-adjacent names with an athletic ring. The spelling Kerby softens the name slightly, its first syllable rhyming with "her" rather than the harder "cur" of the standard form, giving it an almost jaunty, friendly quality. It has never been a top-100 name, which means bearers tend to find it distinctively theirs.
In pop culture, the name appears sporadically in American fiction and television from the 1960s onward, often attached to characters with an easygoing, trustworthy quality. In the contemporary landscape, Kerby sits in the category of surnames-as-given-names that feel effortlessly cool without being trendy — in the same family as Crew, Briggs, or Burke. Its Norse ecclesiastical roots give it unexpected depth, and its rarity in either spelling means it carries the small but genuine pleasure of a name people tend to remember.