Horn Family History

English Scottish German: from Middle English Middle High German horn ‘horn’ applied in a variety of senses: as a metonymic occupational name for someone who made small articles such as combs, spoons, and window lights out of horn; as a metonymic occupational name for someone who played a musical instrument made from the horn of an animal; as a topographic name for someone who lived by a horn-shaped hill or tongue of land in river bend or as a habitational name from any of the places called with this element (for example, in England, Horne in Surrey, Rutland, or Somerset or Horn Hill in Yorkshire); as a nickname perhaps referring to someone with a prominent nose or denoting a cuckolded husband from the Middle English expression haven an horn ‘to be a cuckold’.

German Dutch and Norwegian: habitational name from any of many places and farmsteads so named referring to their location at a spur of land at a horn-shaped piece of land. Swedish: ornamental or topographic name from horn ‘horn, spur of land’.

English: possibly a variant of Hearn. Jewish (Ashkenazic): presumably from German Horn ‘horn’ (compare 1 above) adopted as a surname for reasons that are not clear. It may be purely artificial or it may refer to the ram's horn (Hebrew shofar) blown in the Synagogue during various ceremonies.

Chinese: variant Romanization of the surname 韩 possibly based on its Cantonese pronunciation see Han.