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Updated January 22, 2024

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Boy name origins & meanings

  • Middle English : Carpenter

How Popular Is The Name Turner

Family name origins & meanings

  • English and Scottish : occupational name for a maker of objects of wood, metal, or bone by turning on a lathe, from Anglo-Norman French torner (Old French tornier, Latin tornarius, a derivative of tornus ‘lathe’). The surname may also derive from any of various other senses of Middle English turn, for example a turnspit, a translator or interpreter, or a tumbler.
  • English : nickname for a fast runner, from Middle English turnen ‘to turn’ + ‘hare’.
  • English : occupational name for an official in charge of a tournament, Old French tornei (in origin akin to 1).
  • Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic) : habitational name from a place called Turno or Turna, in Poland and Belarus, or from the city of Tarnów (Yiddish Turne) in Poland.
  • Translated or Americanized form of any of various other like-meaning or like-sounding Jewish surnames.
  • South German (T(h)ürner) : occupational name for a guard in a tower or a topographic name from Middle High German turn ‘tower’, or a habitational name for someone from any of various places named Thurn, for example in Austria.

Famous people with this last name

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