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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • German : metonymic occupational name for an archer, bowman, or bow maker, from Middle High German boge ‘bow’.
  • Jewish (Ashkenazic) : ornamental name from German (Regen)bogen ‘rainbow’ or from German Bogen (Yiddish boigen) ‘arch’, ‘bow’.
  • Norwegian : habitational name from any of various farmsteads, so named with Old Norse bugr (see Boge) + the definite article -en.
  • Perhaps also an altered spelling of Irish Bogan.

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