Parnaby Family History

perhaps as suggested in Redmonds Dictionary of Yorks Surnames an altered form of Parlby (Old French Parlebien ‘speak well’). Interchange of /n/ and /l/ is quite common in place-names and surnames. In this instance it may have been influenced by the co-occurrence of Farnaby in the same counties (NR Yorks Cambs Kent) but there is no evidence that either name was a variant of the other.doubtfully perhaps a variant of Barnaby with the initial consonant unvoiced. With the early bearers given below compare Elizabeth Barneby 1672 in IGI (Cherry Hinton Cambs) and John Barnaby 1828 in IGI (Finghall NR Yorks) but these are so much later than the earliest records of Parnaby in those parishes (1543 1670) that it is more likely that Barnaby is a local pronunciation of Parnaby in (i) by confusion of the two names.

Source: The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, 2016