Barnes

Boy name variations

Family name origins & meanings

• English : topographic name or metonymic occupational name for someone who lived by or worked at a barn or barns, from Middle English barn ‘barn’, ‘granary’. In some cases, it may be a habitational name from Barnes (on the Surrey bank of the Thames in London), which was named in Old English with this word.
• English : name borne by the son or servant of a barne, a term used in the early Middle Ages for a member of the upper classes, although its precise meaning is not clear (it derives from Old English beorn, Old Norse barn ‘young warrior’). Barne was also occasionally used as a personal name (from an Old English, Old Norse byname), and some examples of the surname may derive from this use.
• Irish : possibly an Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Bearáin ‘descendant of Bearán’, a byname meaning ‘spear’.
• French : variant of Bern.
• Jewish : variant of Parnes.