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The barr Surname

barr Name Meaning and History

  1. Scottish and northern Irish: habitational name from any of various places in southwestern Scotland, in particular Ayrshire and Renfrewshire, named with Gaelic barr ‘height’, ‘hill’ or a British cognate of this.
  2. English: topographic name for someone who lived by a gateway or barrier, from Middle English, Old French barre ‘bar’, ‘obstruction’.
  3. English (of Norman origin): habitational name from any of various places in northern France called Barre. See Barre.
  4. English: habitational name from any of various places in England called Barr, for example Great Barr in the West Midlands, named with the Celtic element barro ‘height’, ‘hill’.
  5. English: from the vocabulary word barr ‘bar’, ‘pole’, either a metonymic occupational name for a maker of bars, or perhaps a nickname for a tall, thin man.
  6. Irish: from Ó Bairr, Donegal form of Ó Báire (see Barry 2).

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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The barr name in History

A unique volume of fascinating facts, statistics and commentary following the barr family name as far back in history as possible.

barr Family Facts

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Distribution of barr Families in the US in 1920
Number of barr families
 525-1048
 176-524		 1-175
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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Year

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The information for this map came from Ancestry.com’s US Federal Census Collection.
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