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The barrett Surname

barrett Name Meaning and History

  1. It may be from a medieval personal name, but if so the form is unclear.
  2. Alternatively, it may be a nickname for a quarrelsome or deceitful person, from Middle English bar(r)et(t)e, bar(r)at ‘trouble’, ‘strife’, ‘deception’, ‘cheating’ (Old French barat ‘commerce’, ‘dealings’, a derivative of barater ‘to haggle’). It is possible that the original sense of barat survived unrecorded into Middle English as a word for a market trader; the Italian cognate Baratta has this sense. It could also be a nickname or metonymic occupational name from Old French barette ‘cap’, ‘bonnet’.

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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barrett Family Facts

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Distribution of barrett Families in the US in 1920
Number of barrett families
 824-1646
 275-823
 1-274
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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