Parks is an English surname that originally described someone who lived by or kept an enclosed "park", a hunting ground, or served as a short form of Parkin, a medieval pet name for Peter. For many Americans it recalls civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. As a given name it belongs to the surname trend of Banks and Brooks: in the United States Parks rose from number 5820 in 2000 to number 1987 in 2025, its highest rank yet.