Swan Family History

English: occupational name from Middle English swon(e) northern Middle English swan(e) ‘swineherd; peasant; male servant’ (Old English swān). Compare Swain 2 with which this name was thoroughly confused. English: occasionally perhaps a nickname from Middle English swan swon ‘swan’. In the Middle Ages the swan was taken as a symbol of false pride and according to Chaucer, jealousy. Compare Kite Nightingale and Pye.

English: from the Middle English and Older Scots personal name Swan, an Anglicized form of Old Norse Sveinn. Compare Swain. English: in addition, the name may occasionally also have been topographic or habitational referring to a house or inn distinguished by the sign of a swan (see 2 above). Surnames derived from house and inn signs are rare in English.

Irish: Anglicized form of Mac Suibhne (see Sweeney) as well as an adoption of the Old Norse personal name in 3 above. Swedish: variant mostly Americanized of Svan an ornamental name from svan ‘swan’. Compare Swahn.

Americanized form of German Schwan. Americanized form of Norwegian Svang: habitational name from a farm name in southeastern Norway derived from a word meaning ‘bend, curve; narrow passage’.