Today, a wide variety of locations and institutions are named Belknap or Belnap, all of which are believed to be connected in some manner to this early Puritan emigrant to America.
Places named Belknap or Belnap include over 130 streets, approximately 20 towns, and 1 U.S. county.
Natural features named Belknap range from a nunatak near the South Pole in Antarctica, to a Canadian cape near the North Pole, to a seamount beneath the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, to a tiny rocky island in Indonesia in Southeast Asia.
[1] The earliest documentary reference to someone of this name is to John de Belknap, who first appears in Wiltshire in 1327.
John was the father of Sir Robert Belknap, who served as Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas of England from 1377 to 1388.