Kinzie

Family name origins & meanings

• Scottish : variant of McKenzie.
• John Kinzie (1763–1828), a fur trader, was born at Quebec, where his father, John McKenzie, had come over as a surgeon with the British army. The younger John changed his name to Kinzie and began trading with Indians on the Maumee and St. Joseph rivers after 1781. In or after 1804 he moved to what is now Chicago, where there are a subdivision and a street bearing his name.