Ragland

Ragland is a name that may refer to people who bear it as a surname and to several places in the United States. As a surname, Ragland appears in American and British records and is borne by individuals in public life and private contexts. One widely known bearer is Doria Ragland (born 1956), an American social worker and the mother of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. In genealogy and onomastics, Ragland is treated as a toponymic surname linked to place names.

In geography, Ragland refers to at least one town in the United States: Ragland, Alabama, a small city that is part of the Birmingham metropolitan area and known for its local community and surrounding rural landscape. The name has been used for other communities and historical settlements as well, reflecting patterns of migration and settlement in which surnames were adopted for place names.

Given its dual use, Ragland appears in encyclopedic and historical contexts as both a family name and a geographic designation. Variants and related names include similar spellings that may reflect dialectal pronunciations or transcription differences over time.