Longbone Family History

For a tall man. Some of the earliest forms derive from the Old Scandinavian nickname Langabeinn ‘long bone’ or rather ‘long leg’ occasionally used as a personal name and occurring in those parts of eastern and northern England that had once been under Viking rule.

The equivalent words in Old English were lang and bān which became long and bone in all Middle English dialects except parts of northern England, especially Yorks, where lang and bane commonly retained the Old English vowel sounds.

These northern forms were at first partly and then wholly modified to Standard English Longbone. Compare its antonyms Smallbone and Johanne Lyllebon (i.e. ‘little bone, little leg’) 1332 in Subsidy Rolls (Dorset).