Frank Family History

German, Dutch, Scandinavian, Slovenian, Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, and Jewish (Ashkenazic): ethnic or habitational name for someone from Franconia (German Franken), a region of southwestern Germany so called from its early settlement by the Franks, an ancient Germanic people who inhabited the lands around the River Rhine in Roman times. In the 6th–9th centuries, under leaders such as Clovis I (c. 466–511) and Charlemagne (742–814), the Franks established a substantial empire in western Europe from which the country of France takes its name.

English (of Norman origin), Dutch, and German: from the personal name Frank (Norman French Franco, ancient Germanic Franko), in origin an ethnic name for a Frank or from German Franke ‘Frank(ish), Franconian’ (compare 1 above). This also came to be used as an adjective meaning ‘free, open-hearted, generous’ (Middle English and Old French franc ‘free’, i.e. not a serf or slave), deriving from the fact that in Frankish Gaul only people of Frankish race enjoyed the status of fully free men.

As a surname of German origin, it is also found (in both possible meanings; see 1 above) in France (Alsace and Lorraine). Compare Franc and Franck.