Family name origins & meanings
- Norwegian : habitational name from a farmstead named Nor, from Old Norse nór ‘narrows’, denoting either a narrow passage in a fjord or lake, or a short stream leading from a lake into a river.
- German : probably a habitational name from Nohra in Thuringia, originally named with elements meaning ‘marshy stream’; or, in Holstein, a topographic name from Nohr ‘stagnant water’, ‘lake’.
- German (Nöhr) : from a reduced form of medieval personal name Apollinaris (a derivative of Greek Apollo). This name was borne by a Christian martyr whose cult was centered on Remagen (Rhineland), where it is found in old forms such as Pollenoris, Bolinoris.