Family name origins & meanings
- English, Scottish, German, and Dutch : from Middle English, Middle High German, Middle Dutch horn ‘horn’, applied in a variety of senses: as a metonymic occupational name for someone who made small articles, such as combs, spoons, and window lights, out of horn; as a metonymic occupational name for someone who played a musical instrument made from the horn of an animal; as a topographic name for someone who lived by a horn-shaped spur of a hill or tongue of land in a bend of a river, or a habitational name from any of the places named with this element (for example, in England, Horne in Surrey on a spur of a hill and Horn in Rutland in a bend of a river); as a nickname, perhaps referring to some feature of a person’s physical appearance, or denoting a cuckolded husband.
- Norwegian : habitational name from any of several farmsteads so named, from Old Norse horn ‘horn’, ‘spur of land’.
- Swedish : ornamental or topographic name from horn ‘horn’, ‘spur of land’.
- Jewish (Ashkenazic) : presumably from German Horn ‘horn’, adopted as a surname for reasons that are not clear. It may be purely ornamental, or it may refer to the ram’s horn (Hebrew shofar) blown in the Synagogue during various ceremonies.