English: status name for a peasant farmer or husbandman Middle English bond(e) bounde occasionally bande ‘bondman customary tenant serf’ (Old English bonda bunda reinforced by Old Norse bóndi). The Old Norse word was also in use as a personal name (Old Norse Bóndi Bondi Bundi Bonde borrowed as late Old English Bonda) and this has given rise to other English and Scandinavian surnames alongside those originating as status names such as the Middle English personal name Bonde.

The status of the peasant farmer fluctuated considerably during the Middle Ages; moreover the underlying ancient Germanic word is of disputed origin and meaning. Among ancient Germanic peoples who settled to an agricultural life the term came to signify a farmer holding lands from and bound by loyalty to a lord; from this developed the sense of a free landholder as opposed to a serf.

In England after the Norman Conquest the word sank in status and became associated with the notion of bound servitude. The name can also be a variant of Band. Swedish: variant of Bonde.

In some cases also an American shortened form of Ukrainian Bondarenko and possibly also of some other surname beginning with Bond-. Dutch: variant of Bont, a nickname from bont ‘motley multicolored; speckled’ (see Bonte).