The English surname Glossop or Glassop is toponymic in origin, that is, it belongs to the category of surnames derived from the place where the initial bearer once lived or held land. In this instance, the name indicates "one who came from Glossop", the name of a parish in the High Peak of Derbyshire, on the Lancashire border, thirteen miles east of Manchester. The toponym Glossop is derived from the old English personal name Gloss, in genitive Glott, an Old English personal name which is of unknown origin, and the Old English "hop" meaning "small enclosed valley". Thus the name can literally be translated as Glott's small enclosed valley. This place name is first recorede in the Domesday Book of Derbyshire, which is a written record of a census of English landowners and their property carried out by order of William the Conqueror between 1085 - 87.

In 1605 the marriage of John Sumner and Ann Glossop is registered in Prestbury, Cheshire, and Clifford Glossop, de Hatton Garden, London appears in the Preston Guild Rolls in 1682. In 1768 Simeon Smith and Ann Glassop were marreid in St. George Hannover Square. However, this was never a numerous surname and there is no record of listing of a coat of arms having been granted to a family of this surname.