Family name origins & meanings
- English : from Old English boda ‘messenger’ or (ge)bod ‘message’ + mann ‘man’, ‘servant’, hence an occupational name denoting a messenger or the servant of a messenger.
- German : variant of Bodemann, a habitational name from Boden near Uelzen, or from the Bode river in the Harz Mountains.
- Jewish (from Belarus) : occupational name for the keeper of a bathhouse, from Yiddish bod ‘bathhouse’ + man ‘man’.