Table of contents
Boy name origins & meanings
- English : Man from the north
How Popular Is The Name Norman
Family name origins & meanings
- English, Irish (Ulster), Scottish, and Dutch : name applied either to a Scandinavian or to someone from Normandy in northern France. The Scandinavian adventurers of the Dark Ages called themselves norðmenn ‘men from the North’. Before 1066, Scandinavian settlers in England were already fairly readily absorbed, and Northman and Normann came to be used as bynames and later as personal names, even among the Saxon inhabitants. The term gained a new use from 1066 onwards, when England was settled by invaders from Normandy, who were likewise of Scandinavian origin but by now largely integrated with the native population and speaking a Romance language, retaining only their original Germanic name.
- French : regional name for someone from Normandy.
- Dutch : ethnic name for a Norwegian.
- Jewish (Ashkenazic) : variant of Nordman.
- Jewish : Americanized form of some like-sounding Ashkenazic name.
- Swedish : from norr ‘north’ + man ‘man’.
- Albert Andriessen Bradt, a settler in Rensselaerswijck on the upper Hudson River in NY, was originally from Norway and was known as de Norrman (‘the Norwegian’). The waterway south of Albany which powered his mills became known as the Normanskill (‘the Norman’s Waterway’), by which name it is still known today.