Family name origins & meanings
- French : occupational name for a traveling tinker or locksmith, Old French ma(i)gna(i)n, literally ‘worker’, from a Late Latin derivative of machina ‘work’, ‘trade’, earlier ‘contrivance’, ‘device’.
- Northern Italian : variant of Magnani.
- The name Magnan, from Normandy, France, is documented in Iroquois territory and at Quebec City in 1627. A Magnan or Maigné, from Poitou, France, is recorded in Quebec City in 1669. Another family called Magnan, also called <xref>Lesperance</xref>, from Berry, France, are documented in Montreal in 1672, and a LeMagnan, also called LaGeauge, of unknown origin, occurs in the documents of Sorel, Quebec, for 1675.