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Surname Etymology and Meaning of BOW

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Name meanings and etymologies are often disputed. The information here is compiled from freely available sources, and no claims whatsoever are made for accuracy, either historical or etymological.

1. English: metonymic occupational name for a maker or seller of bows, from Middle English bow (Old English boga, from bugan ‘to bend’). Before the invention of gunpowder, the bow was an important long-range weapon for shooting game as well as in warfare. Boga is also found as a personal name in Old English, and it is possible that this survived into Middle English and so may lie behind the surname in some instances. In other cases (for example, Richard atte Bowe, 1306), the name is topographic, from the same word in the transferred sense ‘arched bridge’, ‘river bend’, an allusion to their similarity in shape to a drawn bow.
2. Irish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Buadhaigh (see Bogue).

Source: Dictionary of American Family Names (2003)