Boy name origins & meanings
- Old English : Dispenser, keeper
Family name origins & meanings
- English and Scottish : metonymic occupational name for a servant employed in the pantry of a great house or monastery, from Middle English spense ‘larder’, ‘storeroom’ (a reduced form of Old French despense, from a Late Latin derivative of dispendere, past participle dispensus, ‘to weigh out or dispense’).
