Updated June 9, 2019

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Family name origins & meanings

  • English : from Old Norse drengr ‘young man’, but with more than one possible interpretation. It may reflect the personal name (originally a byname) of this form, which had some currency in the most Scandinavian-influenced areas of medieval England. Alternatively it may reflect the Middle English borrowing of the vocabulary word in the sense ‘servant’, later a technical term of the feudal system of Northumbria for a free tenant who held land by military and agricultural service, sometimes paying rent as well or in commutation.