Ring

Boy name variations

Family name origins & meanings

• English, German, and Dutch : metonymic occupational name for a maker of rings (from Middle English ring, Middle High German rinc, Middle Dutch ring), either to be worn as jewelry or as component parts of chain-mail, harnesses, and other objects. In part it may also have arisen as a nickname for a wearer of a ring.
• Scandinavian : from ring ‘ring’, probably an ornamental name but possibly applied in the same sense as 3 or 1.
• German : topographic name from Middle High German, Middle Low German rink, rinc ‘circle’.
• Irish (eastern County Cork) : reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Rinn (see Reen).