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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Japanese : ornamental name, now rare in Japan, from mura ‘village’; listed in the Shinsen shōjiroku. Occurrences in America probably originated in the Ryūkyū Islands, or may be shortened forms of other names containing this word.
  • French : according to Morlet, a topographic name from a dialect variant of mure ‘ruined wall(s)’, from mur ‘wall’, Latin murus, or a habitational name from places called La Mure in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Isère, Rhône, and Puy-de-Dôme.
  • Italian (southern Sardinia) : topographic name or nickname from Sardinian mura ‘mulberry’ or ‘blackberry’.
  • Catalan : habitational name from Mura in Barcelona.
  • Czech and Slovak : from Muric, a personal name equivalent to Maurice (see Morris).

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