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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : nickname for a short, fat man, from Middle English, Old French tronchon ‘piece broken off’ (Late Latin truncio, genitive truncionis, from truncus ‘lopped’, ‘cut short’). It is just possible that the nickname also denoted someone who carried a staff or cudgel as a symbol of office, but this sense of the word is not attested in English before the 16th century.
  • French : from Old French tronson ‘block of wood’, perhaps a metonymic occupational name for a woodcutter.

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