Family name origins & meanings
- English, North German, Dutch, Frisian, and Danish : from a Germanic personal name, Boio or Bogo, of uncertain origin. It may represent a variant of Bothe, with the regular Low German loss of the dental between vowels, but a cognate name appears to have existed in Old English (see Boyce), where this feature does not occur. Boje is still in use as a personal name in Friesland.
- Dutch : nickname from Middle Dutch boy(e) ‘boy’, ‘lad’.