Family name origins & meanings
- Dutch and North German : nickname for a brawler, from an agent derivative of Middle Dutch prangen, Middle Low German ‘to fight’.
- German : nickname for an ostentatious or boastful person, from Middle High German brangen ‘to flaunt’, ‘to brag’.
- Altered form of South German Pfranger or Pfränger, agent derivatives of Pfrange (see Prange 2) meaning ‘narrows’. In some instances this may have been a nickname for a narrow-minded person, from the same word in an abstract sense.