Origin of the PENN Surname:
Historical and Biographical Sketch of the Penn Family
The distinguished name of Pen or Penn is a Celtic
topographical word, signifying “a conical top”, generally in a
range of hills, as Penchrise-pen, Skeifhill-pen, etc. But there are several
parishes to which this signification does not apply, in the counties of
Buckingham and Stafford. The family of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania,
derived their name, at an early period, from Penn in the former county.
The ancestry of William Penn, the founder of
Pennsylvania, has not been positively ascertained farther back than his
great-great-grandfather, who bore the same name. The name itself is distinctly
Welsh. When a name was to be assigned to his newly granted province, in 1681,
he himself chose, he says, “New Wales”, but the King gave it the
name of Pennsylvania.
[Contributed by Carolyn Barnett Sinor]
[Contributed by Carolyn Barnett Sinor]
Penn Name Meaning
- English: habitational name from various places, for example Penn in Buckinghamshire and Staffordshire, named with the Celtic element pen ‘hill’, which was apparently adopted in Old English.English: metonymic occupational name for an impounder of stray animals, from Middle English, Old English penn ‘(sheep) pen’.English: pet form of Parnell.German: from Sorbian pien ‘tree stump’, probably a nickname for a short stocky person.Americanized form of a like-sounding Jewish surname.
Source: Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013, Oxford University Press
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