Duns Family History

from Duns (Berwicks) which is thought to be the place from which John Duns Scotus (see (2) below) came. The word dunce is not recorded in OED before 1527. It is derived from the name of John Duns Scotus the scholastic theologian and in the 16th century was used to denote a disciple or follower of his a schoolman a subtle sophistical reasoner. When his system was attacked and ridiculed by humanists and reformers it came to denote ‘a blockhead incapable of learning or scholarship’ and hence a dull pedant a dullard. The surname found so soon after the death of the ‘Subtle Doctor’ in 1308 cannot have originated with any derogatory meaning. It is presumably equivalent to ‘Duns' man’ i.e. a scholar who followed Duns Scotus's system.

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