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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • French (also Bossé) : nickname for a hunchback, from Old French bossu ‘hunchbacked’ (a derivative of bosse ‘lump’, ‘hump’).
  • French : metonymic occupational name for a cooper, from bosse ‘barrel’, ‘keg’.
  • South German, Swiss German, and Danish : from a pet form of the personal name Burkhard (see Burkhart).
  • Dutch : variant of Bosch.
  • The records of Cap St. Ignace in Quebec for 1692 document a Bossé from the Poitou region of France.

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