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The herring Surname

herring Name Meaning and History

  1. English, Scottish, Dutch, and German: metonymic occupational name for a herring fisher or for a seller of the fish, Middle English hering, Dutch haring, Middle High German hærinc. In some cases it may have been a nickname in the sense of a trifle, something of little value, a meaning which is found in medieval phrases and proverbial expressions such as ‘to like neither herring nor barrel’, i.e. not to like something at all.
  2. German: habitational name from Herringen in Westphalia.
  3. Dutch: from a personal name, a derivative of a Germanic compound name with the first element hari, heri ‘army’.
  4. Jewish (Ashkenazic): variant spelling of Hering.

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

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

herring Family Facts

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Distribution of herring Families in the US in 1920
Number of herring families
 228-453
 77-227		 1-76
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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Year

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