nameLab: find a name, make a name, change a name

First name origin & meaning:

English: Small fish

Last name origins & meanings:

1. English, Scottish, Dutch, and German: metonymic occupational name for a herring fisher or for a seller of the fish, Middle English hering, Dutch haring, Middle High German hærinc. In some cases it may have been a nickname in the sense of a trifle, something of little value, a meaning which is found in medieval phrases and proverbial expressions such as ‘to like neither herring nor barrel’, i.e. not to like something at all.
2. German: habitational name from Herringen in Westphalia.
3. Dutch: from a personal name, a derivative of a Germanic compound name with the first element hari, heri ‘army’.
4. Jewish (Ashkenazic): variant spelling of Hering.

This name appears in the following lists: Animals