--"The village of Rudyard [Staffordshire] was named after Ralph Rudyard, a local man reputed to have killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Rudyard Lake was constructed by the engineer John Rennie, for the Trent and Mersey Canal company in 1797–98 to feed the Caldon Canal...
Visitors included John Lockwood Kipling and Alice Macdonald, the parents of Rudyard Kipling, who met there on a trip from Burslem. They liked the place so much they named their son after it" - Wikipedia--
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Well well: you learn something new every day. Many thanks, keberoxu.
So it wasn't a family name, as I speculated, but a bit of sentimental family memorabilia. But my point that he probably adopted it professionally as being more distinguished and arresting than his first name, by which they would probably have meant him to be known, still stands.

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