Family name origins & meanings
- English : from a pet form of the female personal name Barbara (see Barbara).
- Southern French : from a diminutive of Occitan barbari ‘barbarous’, ‘barbarian’. In particular, this word came to denote a Moor or Berber from the Barbary Coast in North Africa, and hence was then applied to a man of swarthy appearance or uncouth habits.
- An immigrant from the Périgord region of France was variously documented in Montreal in 1668 as Barbary and Barbarin, with the secondary surname Grandmaison.