Updated June 9, 2019

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Family name origins & meanings

  • Scottish and English : from Middle English blak(e) ‘black’ (Old English blæc, blaca), a nickname given from the earliest times to a swarthy or dark-haired man.
  • Scottish and English : from Old English blāc ‘pale’, ‘fair’, i.e. precisely the opposite meaning to 1, and a variant of Blake 2. Blake and Black are found more or less interchangeably in several surnames and place names.
  • English : variant of Blanc as a Norman name. The pronunciation of the nasalized vowel gave considerable difficulty to English speakers, and its quality was often ignored.
  • Scottish and Irish : translation of various names from Gaelic dubh ‘black’ (see Duff).
  • Danish and Swedish : generally, probably the English and Scottish name, but in some cases perhaps a variant spelling of Blak, a nickname from blak ‘black’.
  • In some cases, a translation of various names meaning ‘black’, for example German and Jewish Schwarz.

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