Family name origins & meanings
- English and French : nickname (literal or ironic) meaning ‘generous’, from Middle English, Old French large ‘generous’, ‘free’ (Latin largus ‘abundant’). The English word came to acquire its modern sense only gradually during the Middle Ages; it is used to mean ‘ample in quantity’ in the 13th century, and the sense ‘broad’ first occurs in the 14th. This use is probably too late for the surname to have originated as a nickname for a fat man.