Family name origins & meanings
- English (mainly Lancashire) and Scottish : topographic name for someone who lived by a holly tree, from Middle English holm, a divergent development of Old English hole(g)n; the main development was towards modern English holly (see Hollis).
- English and Scottish : topographic name or habitational name from northern Middle English holm ‘island’, Old Norse holmr (see Holm 1).
- Danish and Swedish : variant of Holm 1.
- Norwegian : habitational name from any of several farmsteads, so named from the dative singular of Old Norse holmr ‘islet’, ‘low flat land beside a river’.