Penn Family History

English: habitational name from either of two places called Penn (in Buckinghamshire and Staffordshire) both of which are named with Brittonic penn ‘head’ often used in hill-names. English: topographic name or metonymic occupational name from Middle English pen(n) ‘enclosure animal pen fold’ (Old English penn) for someone who lived by or worked at a fold. Examples of this surname are formally difficult to distinguish from those in 1 above.

English: from a pet form of the female personal name Pernel see Parnell. English: variant of Pinn. Cornish: shortened form of Penna. South German: unexplained.

Germanized form of Sorbian P'eń: from Lower Sorbian p'eń ‘tree stump trunk’ probably a nickname for a short stocky person.

Breton (mainly Finistère; also Le Penn): variant of Pen and in North America (also) an altered form of this.

Americanized form of some similar (like-sounding) Jewish surname. In some cases probably also an Americanized form of Slovenian Pen. Americanized form of the Chinese surname 彭 see Peng.