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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : regional name for someone from the county of Cornwall, from Middle English corneys, cornysh. Not surprisingly, the surname is common in adjacent Devon, but it is also well established as far afield as Essex and Lancashire.
  • Possibly also an Americanized spelling of German Kornisch, a nickname for a sickly or weak person, from Sorbian krne ‘weak’, ‘poor’.

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