From Middle English 'ladde' meaning servant or young man; an occupational or descriptive surname.
Ladd derives from the Middle English ladde, meaning a young man, a servant, or a boy — a word that carried both social and affectionate connotations in medieval English, referring to someone of lower station but also simply to youth and vigor. The term evolved into a common English and Scottish noun ("lad") and simultaneously crystallized as a surname in northern England and the Scottish borders, where occupational and descriptive surnames were codified during the great medieval surname-formation period. From surname it eventually migrated, as many surnames do, into given-name territory.
The name received its most visible boost from Alan Ladd, the Hollywood actor whose laconic screen presence dominated the late 1940s and early 1950s. His performance as the quiet, mythic gunfighter in Shane (1953) is one of cinema's defining Western portraits, and his name became associated with a particular American archetype: the reserved, capable man of few words. That association gave Ladd a rugged, cinematic quality that surnames-as-first-names often acquire from a single famous bearer.
As a given name Ladd is genuinely uncommon — rare enough to feel distinctive, Anglo-Saxon enough to feel rooted, and short enough to wear easily through a lifetime. It sits in the same register as names like Colt, Wynn, or Brock: American in flavor, unpretentious in character, and carrying just enough history to give it substance beyond mere novelty.