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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Scottish and Irish : reduced form of McNay.
  • English : variant of Nye.
  • French : habitational name from places so called in Manche and Pyrénées Atlantiques, possibly named with Latin Nadium, from a Gaulish personal name, Nadius.
  • Dutch : metonymic occupational name for a tailor or embroiderer, from a derivative of naaien ‘to sew’.
  • Jewish (Ashkenazic) : Yiddish equivalent of German Neu.

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