Is this your surname? Why not share this page on Facebook

Surname Etymology and Meaning of YEOMAN

New! Discuss the origin and etymology of YEOMAN at the British Surnames Forum - contribute your own knowledge and information about where YEOMAN comes from.

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.

A man free-born, a freeholder; one next in order to the gentry.

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

1. status name, from Middle English yoman, yeman, used of an attendant of relatively high status in a noble household, ranking between a Sergeant and a Groom, or between a Squire and a Page. The word appears to derive from a compound of Old English geong ‘young’ + mann ‘man’. Later in the Middle English period it came to be used of a modest independent freeholder, and this latter sense may well lie behind some examples of the surname.
2. topographic name, an expanded form of Yeo.

Source: Dictionary of American Family Names (2003)