The harden Surname
harden Name Meaning and History
- English (mainly southeastern England): habitational name from Harden in West Yorkshire, which gets its name from Old English hara ‘hare’ or hær ‘rock’ + denu ‘valley’. Harden in Staffordshire, recorded in the Middle Ages as Haworthyn, Harwerthyn (from Old English heah ‘high’ + worðign ‘enclosure’), was probably not reduced to its modern form early enough to lie behind any examples of the surname.
- Irish: reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Giolla Deacair (see Hardy).
- North German: patronymic from a short form of a Germanic personal name with the first element hard ‘hardy’, ‘brave’, ‘strong’.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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