The gunn Surname
gunn Name Meaning and History
- Scottish: name of a clan associated with Caithness, derived from the Old Norse personal name Gunnr (or the feminine form Gunne), a short form of any of various compound names with the first element gunn ‘battle’.
- Scottish: sometimes an Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Gille Dhuinn ‘son of the servant of the brown one’ (see Dunn). (According to Woulfe a name of the same form also existed in Sligo, Ireland.)
- English: metonymic occupational name for someone who operated a siege engine or cannon, perhaps also a nickname for a forceful person, from Middle English gunne, gonne ‘ballista’, ‘cannon’, ‘gun’. The term originated as a humorous application of the Scandinavian female personal name Gunne or Gunnhildr.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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