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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English, Scottish, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, German, and Jewish (Ashkenazic) : topographic name for someone who lived on patch of sandy soil, from the vocabulary word sand. As a Swedish or Jewish name it was often purely ornamental.
  • Dutch and Belgian : reduced form of Van den Sand(e), Van den Zande, a habitational name from places such as Zande in West Flanders or various minor places named with zand ‘sand’.
  • English and Scottish : from a short form of Alexander.
  • French : from a Germanic personal name, Sando.

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