Bard Family History

English (of Norman origin) and French: from the Old French personal name Bard(e), ancient Germanic Bardo from barta ‘battle axe’. This was borne as a surname by a prominent Norman family with lands in west Normandy and in various English and Scottish counties including Essex, Hertfordshire, North Yorkshire, Northumberland, and Lanarkshire. In Scotland, the original family were Norman landowners in Strathaven parish in Lanarkshire.

They were descended from the Baards, lords of Loftus in North Yorkshire, descendants of the mid 12th-century Richard Baart. Irish: altered form of either Beard or Baird. Scottish: from Gaelic bàrd ‘poet, minstrel’. See Baird.

French: nickname from Old French baard ‘sedan chair; stretcher’, probably denoting the owner of such a device. French: from Old French bart (from Late Latin barrum) ‘mud, clay (used as a mortar)’, probably applied as a metonymic occupational name for a bricklayer.

French: habitational name from any of several minor places called Bard, from the Gaulish element barro ‘height, hill’. Hungarian (Bárd): metonymic occupational name for a butcher, woodcutter, or carpenter, from bárd ‘hatchet, cleaver’.

Jewish (Ashkenazic): nickname for someone with a luxurious beard from a blend of German Bart and Yiddish bord, both meaning ‘beard’. Probably also an altered form of German Bart.