Family name origins & meanings
- English : topographic name from Middle English hose, huse ‘brambles’, ‘thorns’.
- English : habitational name from a place in Leicestershire, named from Old English hōs, plural of hōh ‘spur of land’ (literally ‘heel’), or a topographic name with the same meaning.
- English and German : metonymic occupational name from Middle English, Middle Low and High German hose ‘hose’, ‘leggings’, denoting a knitter or seller of hose, or a nickname for someone who habitually wore noticeble legwear.
- German (Upper Saxony) : apparently from a Czech personal name, Hos, a reduced form of Johannes (see John).