Bellingham ( /ˈbɛlɪŋhæm/ US dict: bĕl′·ĭng·hăm) is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It is the twelfth-largest city in the state, with 80,885 residents at the 2010 Census. The boundaries of the city encompass the former towns of Fairhaven, Whatcom, Sehome, and Bellingham.

Bellingham is acclaimed for its small-city flavor, easy access to outdoor opportunities in the San Juan Islands and North Cascades Mountains as well as proximity to the cosmopolitan cities of Vancouver and Seattle.

The name of Bellingham is derived from the bay on which the city is situated. George Vancouver, who visited the area in June 1792, named the bay for Sir William Bellingham, the controller of the storekeeper's account of the Royal Navy.

Prior to euro-American settlement, Bellingham was in the homeland of Coast Salish peoples of the Lummi and neighboring tribes. The first Caucasian settlers reached the area in 1854. In 1858, the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush caused thousands of miners, storekeepers, and scalawags to head north from California. Whatcom (Bellingham's original name) grew overnight from a small northwest mill town to a bustling seaport, the basetown for the Whatcom Trail, which led to the Fraser Canyon goldfields, used in open defiance of colonial Governor James Douglas's edict that all entry to the gold colony be made via Victoria, British Columbia.

Lynda Bellingham (born Meredith Lee Hughes^{[citation needed]} on 31 May 1948) is a Canadian-born English actress, broadcaster and author.

Bellingham was born to a single mother in Montreal and adopted by an English couple at the age of four months. She was brought up in Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, England and was educated at Aylesbury High School and trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

Twice in the 1960s Bellingham appeared in the Pendley Open Air Shakespeare Festival. She got her big break as a nurse in an ITV afternoon soap opera of the 1970s, General Hospital. She went topless for her roles in Confessions of a Driving Instructor and Sweeney! (1977).

She is best known as the head of the family in the Oxo television adverts during the 1980s. Other prominent roles included the James Herriot drama All Creatures Great and Small (where she was the second actress to play Helen Herriot on television, replacing Carol Drinkwater) and the situation comedy Second Thoughts and its sequel, Faith in the Future.