Updated June 9, 2019

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Family name origins & meanings

  • English : either an occupational name for a cowherd, from Middle English kineman ‘cattle man’ (not recorded except as a surname), or more probably from a Middle English survival of the Old English personal name Cynemann ‘royal man’, i.e. the king’s man.
  • Scottish : according to Black, a reduced form of Kininmonth, a habitational name from either of two places so named in Fife; alternatively, it may be a variant of Kinmont, a habitational name from a place named Kinmont, in Annandale in the Borders.
  • Jewish (Ashkenazic) : see Kin.
  • Altered spelling of German Kinmann (see Kuehn).