Family name origins & meanings
- English : from Middle English pyion, peion ‘young bird’, ‘young pigeon’ (from Old French pijon), a metonymic occupational name for a hunter of wood pigeons or a nickname for a foolish or gullible person, since the birds were easily taken.
- English : altered form of the nickname Pet(y)jon (see Pettyjohn).
- Irish (County Monaghan) : local form of McGuigan, from Gaelic Mac Uiginn ‘son of the Viking’.