Last name origins & meanings:
- English: metonymic occupational name for a grower or seller of
beans, from Old English bēan ‘beans’ (a collective
singular). Occasionally it may have been applied as a nickname for a
someone considered of little importance.
- English: nickname for a
pleasant person, from Middle English bēne ‘friendly’,
‘amiable’ (of unknown origin; there is apparently no connection with
Bain or Bon).
- Scottish: Anglicized form of
the Gaelic personal name Beathán, a diminutive of
beatha ‘life’.
- Translation of German Bohne, or
an altered spelling of Biehn. See also Bihn.
- Mistranslation of French Lefevre. As the vocabulary word
fèvre ‘smith’ was replaced by forgeron, the meaning
of the old word became opaque, and the surname was reinterpreted as if
it were La fève, from fève ‘(fava) bean’. Lefevre
is the most common name in French Canada; great numbers of them
migrated to the US, where many adopted the name Bean, in the belief
that it was a translation of Lefèvre. See also
Lafave.
|