"Orm" is a Viking name, meaning "snake" or "dragon".

Note: With nothing being known of William Salisbury I's forebears, tracing through the lineage of his wife, Mary Ormsby, we go back to the Vikings.

The precise origins of the Ormerod family are shrouded in the mists of time, but it is known that "Ormerod" was originally a place name, referring to a clearing or area of land (rod) belonging to a man named Orm. The original "Ormerod" is in Cliviger in East Lancashire, close to the border with the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Such an Orm may well have cleared the land at Ormerod for his family, and thus provided the name of this place.

From the Domesday Book we learn that significant areas of land in that Northern area of England were owned by a Gamel and Orm his son. They were Christian Vikings who had settled in the Yorkshire area, and by the middle of the 11th century this Orm was already a man of considerable importance. In 1055 Orm paid for the restoration of the Saxon Church at Kirkdale. In 1771 the plasterwork was removed from the south doorway of this church, exposing the Saxon sundial that recorded Orm’s generosity.

See here for extended content from the Domesday Book