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The prime Surname

prime Name Meaning and History

  1. English: from a Middle English personal name or nickname. The personal name existed in Old English, and is probably derived from Old English prim ‘early morning’ (from Latin primus ‘first’, used as the name of one of the canonical hours). The surname may be derived from this word as a Middle English nickname in the sense ‘fine’, ‘excellent’.
  2. French: feminine form of Prim 3.
  3. Dutch: variant of Priem.
  4. Probably an Americanized spelling of German Preim, a topographic name (of Slavic origin), perhaps from a river near Hannover; or of Preime, a variant of Primus.

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

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

prime Family Facts

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Distribution of prime Families in the US in 1920
Number of prime families
 48-93
 17-47
 1-16
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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Year

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