Family name origins & meanings
- English and Scottish : nickname for someone with fair or prematurely white hair, from Middle English whit ‘white’ + heved ‘head’.
- Irish (Connacht) : erroneous translation of Ó Ceanndubháin ‘descendant of the little black-headed one’ (see Canavan), as if from Gaelic ceann ‘head’ + bán ‘white’.
- Translated form of German Weisshaupt (see Weishaupt) or Weisskopf (see Weiskopf).
