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The bass Surname

bass Name Meaning and History

  1. English: from Old French bas(se) ‘low’, ‘short’ (Latin bassus ‘thickset’; see Basso), either a descriptive nickname for a short person or a status name meaning ‘of humble origin’, not necessarily with derogatory connotations.
  2. English: in some instances, from Middle English bace ‘bass’ (the fish), hence a nickname for a person supposedly resembling this fish, or a metonymic occupational name for a fish seller or fisherman.
  3. Scottish: habitational name from a place in Aberdeenshire, of uncertain origin.
  4. Jewish (Ashkenazic): metonymic occupational name for a maker or player of bass viols, from Polish, Ukrainian, and Yiddish bas ‘bass viol’.
  5. German: see Basse.

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

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

bass Family Facts

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Distribution of bass Families in the US in 1920
Number of bass families
 252-501
 85-251		 1-84
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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Year

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  • You can decide where (in which states) to start searching for bass records.
  • You can see how bass families moved over time by selecting different Census years.

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The information for this map came from Ancestry.com’s US Federal Census Collection.
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  • Click here to search bass census records.

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