Österlund

Österlund is a Swedish surname and, occasionally, a geographic name. It is a compound of öster ("east") and lund ("grove"), a common element in Swedish toponyms that describes a grove located to the east of a reference point such as a village or farm.

As a surname, Österlund is typically toponymic rather than patronymic. The adoption of fixed family names in Sweden in the early modern period led many communities to assign locational names based on nearby landscape features. The name then spread from its place of origin through marriage, migration, and emigration, becoming established among Swedish-speaking populations abroad.

Today, the surname is most common in Sweden, with descendants and communities in other Nordic countries and in North America. In international contexts the diacritic ö is often dropped, yielding Osterlund. There may also be related or similar place names and surnames that share the same elements, reflecting its geographic origin.

Österlund illustrates how Swedish naming practices combined directional or landscape elements to form durable family names, a pattern that remains visible in contemporary surname distributions.