English (Essex) and French: nickname from Middle English, Old
French nice ‘foolish’, ‘simple’ (Latin nescius
‘ignorant’). In the 14th century the English word also acquired the
sense ‘wanton’ and in the 15th century ‘coy’, ‘shy’, both of which
meanings may be reflected in the surname. The sense ‘fastidious’,
‘precise’, ‘minute’ developed only in the 16th century, probably too
late to have given rise to any surnames, and the present-day sense of
general approbation is not clearly attested until the late 19th
century.Americanized spelling of German
Neis.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
105,573
Historical Documents & Family Trees with Nice
The information for this chart came from the U.S. Immigration Collection at Ancestry.com.
You can find out where the majority of the Nice families were living before
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Click on a circle in the chart to view Nice immigration records
You can find out when most of the Nice families immigrated
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Click on a circle in the chart to view Nice birth and death records
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