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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English (mainly East Anglia) : metonymic occupational name for a sailor, from Middle Dutch hoey ‘cargo ship’.
  • Northern Irish : variant of Howey 2 and Haughey.
  • Scottish : habitational name from some unidentified minor place named Hoy, or from the Orkney island of Hoy, which was named in Old Norse as Háey, from ‘high’ + ey ‘island’.
  • Danish (Høy) : nickname for a tall person, from høj ‘high’.

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