Last name origins & meanings:
- German, Dutch, Scandinavian, Slovenian, Czech, Hungarian, and
Jewish (Ashkenazic): ethnic or regional name for someone from
Franconia (German Franken), a region of southwestern Germany so
called from its early settlement by the Franks, a Germanic people who
inhabited the lands around the river Rhine in Roman times. In the
6th–9th centuries, under leaders such as Clovis I
(c. 466–511) and Charlemagne (742–814), the Franks
established a substantial empire in western Europe, from which the
country of France takes its name. The term Frank in eastern
Mediterranean countries was used, in various vernacular forms, to
denote the Crusaders and their descendants, and the American surname
may also be an Americanized form of such a form.
- English, Dutch, German, etc.: from the personal name
Frank, in origin an ethnic name for a Frank. This also came be
used as an adjective meaning ‘free’, ‘open-hearted’, ‘generous’,
deriving from the fact that in Frankish Gaul only people of Frankish
race enjoyed the status of fully free men.
This name appears in the following lists:
Nobel Prize Winners,
Presidents' Kids,
Rock Kings and Queens,
Silver Screen
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