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Surname Etymology and Meaning of HEAD

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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.

Anciently written Hede or Hide. Probably from the place written Hede or Hide in Doomsday Book, now Hithe, in Kent, England, where the earliest traces of the Head family are found. From the Anglo-Saxon Hithe, a harbor, a shelter for boats.

Source: An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names With an Essay on their Derivation and Import (1857).

English (chiefly Kent): from Middle English heved ‘head’, applied as a nickname for someone with some peculiarity or disproportion of the head, or a topographic name for someone who lived on a hill or at the head of a stream or valley. This surname has long been established in Ireland.

Source: Dictionary of American Family Names (2003)