Last name: SWAN

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All you have to know about the last name SWAN

Last name frequency

SWAN : This last name is indexed 237,071 times on Geneanet!

Origin of last name

SWAN : 1: English: occupational name from Middle English swon(e) northern Middle English swan(e) ‘swineherd; peasant; male servant’ (Old English swān). Compare Swain 2 with which this name was thoroughly confused.2: English: occasionally perhaps a nickname from Middle English swan swon ‘swan’. In the Middle Ages the swan was taken as a symbol of false pride and according to Chaucer jealousy. Compare Kite Nightingale and Pye.3: English: from the Middle English and Older Scots personal name Swan an Anglicized form of Old Norse Sveinn. Compare Swain 1.4: English: in addition the name may occasionally also have been topographic or habitational referring to a house or inn distinguished by the sign of a swan (see 2 above). Surnames derived from house and inn signs are rare in English.5: Irish: Anglicized form of Mac Suibhne (see Sweeney) as well as an adoption of the Old Norse personal name in 3 above.6: Swedish: variant mostly Americanized of Svan an ornamental name from svan ‘swan’. Compare Swahn.7: Americanized form of German Schwan.8: Americanized form of Norwegian Svang: habitational name from a farm name in southeastern Norway derived from a word meaning ‘bend curve; narrow passage’.

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