Family name origins & meanings
- English (mainly Kent) : nickname from Middle English pē, pā ‘peacock’ (see Peacock).
- English : from an early medieval personal name, apparently masculine, but of uncertain origin; perhaps derived from 1, or, as Reaney suggests, a survival of Old English Pæga.
- French : habitational name from places called Le Pay, in Indre, Rhône, and Vendée. This may also be a variant of pays ‘region’, ‘country’, used to denote a local person.
- Irish (County Kilkenny) : apparently from the Old English female personal name Pega, taken to Ireland (Kilkenny) by English settlers. Peakirk in Northamptonshire, England, is named for St. Pega (died c. 719), who reputedly founded a cell there.