Family name origins & meanings
- probably Spanish : unexplained. In Spain this name is mainly found in Andalusia.
- English : variant spelling of Paine.
- Southern French : from Latin paganus ‘country dweller’, hence a nickname for a country-born person, or from its later sense of ‘pagan’, ‘heathen’, given to a child not yet baptized. Compare Paine.
- A Payan, also called Saintonge, from the Saintonge region of France, is documented in Quebec City in 1699.