Eugene Aram (1704 – 16 August 1759) was an English philologist, but also infamous as the murderer celebrated by Thomas Hood in his ballad The Dream of Eugene Aram, and by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his 1832 novel Eugene Aram.

Aram was born in 1704 to humble parents at Ramsgill in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His father was a gardener on the Newby Hall estate, owned by Sir Edward Blackett. His father had a good knowledge of botany and horticulture.

He had a "fair school education": reading and arithmetic. At 13 he started working with his father on the Newby estate. Sir Edward allowed him to make use of his library and he taught himself Greek and Latin. In 1720 he went to work as a book-keeper in a counting house in London run by Christopher Blackett, a relative of Sir Edward. He contracted smallpox in London, and became very ill. He decided to return to Yorkshire and found a post as a school teacher in the small village of Netherdale.

While still young, he married "unfortunately" (a term then used for impregnating a woman before marriage) and settled as a schoolmaster at Netherdale; during his years there he taught himself Hebrew.

In 1734 he moved to Knaresborough, where he remained as schoolmaster till 1744. In that year Daniel Clark, a shoemaker in Knaresborough and an intimate friend of Aram, was rumored to have come into money through his wife. Aram discussed this with a friend, Richard Houseman. They told Clark to start purchasing items on credit, as local shopkeepers knew of his sudden wealth. The shoemaker followed this advice and built up debts exceeding his capital.

Then, after obtaining a considerable quantity of goods from some of the tradesmen in the town and rumours starting to spread that he could not repay the debts, Clark suddenly disappeared on 8 February 1744. The goods included jewelry and silver plates, and were of quite high value. It was first thought he had run off to escape his debts or to sell the goods. Soon after, Aram began clearing all his own debts. Neighbors commented on his new-found wealth and on the additional absence of Houseman. In April 1744 Aram left town and went back to London where he began teaching French.

Suspicions of being concerned in this swindling transaction fell upon Aram. His garden was searched, and some of the goods found there. However, there was not sufficient evidence to convict him of any crime and he was discharged, and soon after set out for London, leaving his wife behind. In London he found employment as an usher in a school at Piccadilly and learned the Syriac language, Chaldee (Aramaic) and Arabic.

For several years he travelled through parts of England, acting as usher in a number of schools, and settled eventually at the Grammar School at King's Lynn, in Norfolk. During his travels he had amassed considerable materials for a work he had projected on etymology, entitled A Comparative Lexicon of the English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Celtic Languages. He was undoubtedly a pioneer in the field of philology, who realised, what was then not yet admitted by scholars, the affinity of the Celtic language to the other languages in Europe, and could dispute the then accepted belief that Latin was derived from Greek.