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Updated June 9, 2019

Boy name origins & meanings

  • Old English : Noble man.(German) Mighty as a bear

Family name origins & meanings

  • Scottish and northern Irish : habitational name from any of various places in southwestern Scotland, in particular Ayrshire and Renfrewshire, named with Gaelic barr ‘height’, ‘hill’ or a British cognate of this.
  • English : topographic name for someone who lived by a gateway or barrier, from Middle English, Old French barre ‘bar’, ‘obstruction’.
  • English (of Norman origin) : habitational name from any of various places in northern France called Barre. See Barre.
  • English : habitational name from any of various places in England called Barr, for example Great Barr in the West Midlands, named with the Celtic element barro ‘height’, ‘hill’.
  • English : from the vocabulary word barr ‘bar’, ‘pole’, either a metonymic occupational name for a maker of bars, or perhaps a nickname for a tall, thin man.
  • Irish : from Ó Bairr, Donegal form of Ó Báire (see Barry 2).

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