Howe Family History
Howe Surname Meaning
English: topographic name pronounced to rhyme with hoe, who, or how, from Middle English hoʒe ‘spur of a hill, steep ridge, or slight rise’. Hoʒe comes from a late variant hōge of the dative case of the Old English root word hōh, literally ‘heel (of a person) or hock (of an animal)’, a common placename element. The regular Old English dative singular hō is the source of the placenames Hoo and Hoe and the surname may also be habitational name from a placename consisting of this word, for example Hoe (Norfolk), Hoo (Kent), Hooe (Devon, Sussex), or either of two places called The Hoo in Great Gaddesden and Saint Paul's Walden (Hertfordshire).
Hose (Leicestershire) comes from the plural form of the word (see Howes). Howe may also be from Old Norse haugr ‘mound, hill’; for without other evidence, this cannot be distinguished from howe ‘spur of a hill’ and is certainly the origin of Howe (Norfolk) and Howe Hill in Kirkburn (East Yorkshire). See also Hough.
English: variant of Hugh, pronounced to rhyme with who or how. Americanized form of one or more similar (like-sounding) Jewish surnames. Americanized form of Norwegian Hove.
Irish: variant of Haugh. Irish: variant of Hoey.
Chinese: variant Romanization of the surnames 侯, see Hou. Chinese: possibly from Cantonese form of the Chinese names 豪 (meaning ‘heroic’) or 浩 (meaning ‘vast’) or 昊 (meaning ‘extensive and limitless’), which were monosyllabic personal names or part of disyllabic personal names of some early Chinese immigrants in the US.
Source: Dictionary of American Family Names 2nd edition, 2022