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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English, Scottish, French, and German : from Middle English, Old French, Middle High German olifant ‘elephant’ (medieval Latin olifantus, from classical Latin elephantus, Greek elephas, genitive elephantos). The circumstances in which this word was applied as a surname are not clear. It may have been a nickname for a large, lumbering individual, or a metonymic occupational name for a worker in ivory, or a habitational name from a house distinguished by the sign of an elephant.

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