Family name origins & meanings
- English : topographic name for someone who lived by a boundary stone or a prominent outcrop of rock, from Middle English hōn ‘stone’, ‘rock’. This is the same word as modern English hone ‘whetstone’, and the surname may also be a metonymic occupational name for someone who used a whetstone to sharpen swords, daggers, and knives.
- Dutch and North German (Höne) : from the Germanic personal name Huno, a short form of the various compound names with the first element hūn. Compare, for example, Humphrey. The exact meaning of this element is disputed, but it may be cognate with Old Norse húnn ‘bear cub’.