Pallas

Family name origins & meanings

• German (of Slavic origin) : from a pet form of the personal name Pavel or Paweł, respectively the Czech and Polish forms of Paul, or from a Sorbian cognate.
• German (of Slavic origin) : nickname for a small man, from Slavic palac ‘thumb’.
• Irish : MacLysaght ascribes the origin of this surname in Ireland to the arrival there in the 15th century of a Lombard family of bankers named de Palatio.
• English : from Old French palis, paleis ‘palisade’, ‘fence’, hence a topographic name for someone who lived by a palisade or a metonymic occupational name for a maker of fences.
• English : possibly a metonymic occupational name for someone who worked at a palace (bishop’s, archbishop’s, or royal), from Old French, Middle English palais, paleis.
• English : metonymic occupational name for a worker at a straw stack, from Old French paille ‘straw’ + Middle English hous ‘house’.
• Greek : ornamental name or nickname from Albanian pallë ‘sword’.
• Catalan (Pallàs) : variant spelling of Pallars, a regional name from the Catalan district of Pallars, in the Pyrenees.