Harden

Boy name variations

Family name origins & meanings

• English (mainly southeastern England) : habitational name from Harden in West Yorkshire, which gets its name from Old English hara ‘hare’ or hær ‘rock’ + denu ‘valley’. Harden in Staffordshire, recorded in the Middle Ages as Haworthyn, Harwerthyn (from Old English hēah ‘high’ + worðign ‘enclosure’), was probably not reduced to its modern form early enough to lie behind any examples of the surname.
• Irish : reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Giolla Deacair (see Hardy).
• North German : patronymic from a short form of a Germanic personal name with the first element hard ‘hardy’, ‘brave’, ‘strong’.

Famous people with this last name