English surname turned given name meaning 'dweller by the woods,' from Old English 'wudu'.
Woods as a surname traces to the Old English wudu, simply meaning 'forest' or 'wood,' and was given to families who lived near or within woodland — a common enough circumstance in medieval England that the surname spread widely across Britain and the anglophone world. As an occupational and topographic surname, it belongs to the oldest stratum of English naming, predating records and rooted in the literal landscape of daily life. As a given name, Woods is extraordinarily rare, sitting firmly in the tradition of nature-inflected surname names that have grown in popularity in the twenty-first century.
The name carries an unmistakable association with Eldrick 'Tiger' Woods, whose surname has become one of the most recognized in the world through his dominance of professional golf — a name synonymous with prodigious natural talent, discipline, and a complicated, epic public life. That association gives Woods-as-first-name a quiet athletic charge, though the name's appeal runs deeper into its elemental meaning. Forests have carried profound symbolic weight across virtually every human culture — as places of mystery, transformation, danger, and refuge.
From the enchanted forests of European fairy tales to the sacred groves of Celtic and Norse traditions to Thoreau's Walden, the woods represent the wild interior, the space outside civilization where one discovers the self. For parents drawn to nature names that feel grounded rather than delicate, Woods offers something substantial: four letters, one syllable, and centuries of human imagination behind it.