Family name origins & meanings
- English (chiefly Lancashire) : habitational name from any of various places in northern England so called. Those in Lancashire and near Bedale in North Yorkshire are from the Old Norse personal name Horni ‘horn’ + Old Norse býr ‘farm’, ‘settlement’. One in the parish of Great Smeaton, North Yorkshire, is recorded in Domesday Book as Horenbodebi and probably has as its first element an Old Norse personal name composed of the elements horn ‘horn’ + boði ‘messenger’.