The mori Surname
mori Name Meaning and History
- Japanese: variously written, but most often with a character meaning ‘forest’, and denoting the sacred grove around a Shinto shrine. The character used to list the name in the Shinsen shojiroku means ‘guard’ or ‘keeper’. The name is mostly found in west-central Japan, the island of Shikoku, and in the Ryukyu Islands. Another name, properly Romanized as Mori, is written phonetically with the characters for ‘hair’ and ‘advantage’, but bearers of this name are also of the original Mori family. There were several daimyo families named Mori, the greatest originating in Aki (now part of Hiroshima prefecture). From their base in Choshu (Nagato: now part of Yamaguchi prefecture), they ruled much of western Honshu in the 16th century, until restricted by Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu to Choshu.
- Italian: patronymic form of Moro.
- German (Möri): from a pet form of the personal name Morhart (see Morath).
- Hungarian (Móri): habitational name for someone from a place called Mór in Fejér county of Hungary.
- Hungarian: patronymic from the personal name Mór, from Latin Maurus.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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