Harbour

Family name origins & meanings

• English : metonymic occupational name for a keeper of a lodging house, from late Old English herebeorg ‘shelter’, ‘lodging’ (from here ‘army’ + beorg ‘shelter’). (The change of -er- to -ar- is a regular phonetic process in Old French and Middle English.)
• Variant of French Arbour.
• A Harbour or Arbour, from Normandy, France, is documented in Quebec City in 1671.