Blair

In Great Britain, we used to hear the name Blair quite often, of course mostly because of the Prime Minister. However, there ought to have been another well known Blair, the one giving his name to the city Port Blair in the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.
Not having the foggiest idea about the origin of the name, I had to turn to The Oxford Names Companion. There a simple and straight forward explanation was offered. The name is Scottish or North Irish. It is a habitation name and derives from one of the many places called “blár”. Blár is a Gaelic word meaning plain or field, especially a battlefield.