Norman in my family tree
1. English: name applied either to a Scandinavian settler or to someone
from Normandy in Northern France. The Scandinavian adventurers of the Dark Ages
called themselves norðmenn (nominative singular norðmaðr) men from the
North. When they settled in England and Northern France the term was adopted by
the local population as Norþmann and Norman(t) respectively.
The pre-Conquest Scandinavian settlers in England were fairly readily
absorbed, and Nor(þ)mann came to be used as a byname and later
as a personal name, even among the Saxon inhabitants. It would have been
the more easily assimilated because norð and mann were both Germanic
name-forming elements in their own right, so in fact the compound name
could have been formed without any specific reference to Scandinavians.
The word gained a new use when England was settled by invaders from Normandy, of
Scandinavian origin but by now largely
integrated with the native population and speaking a Romance language,
retaining only their original Germanic name.
2. Jewish (Ashkenazic): of uncertain origin. In at least one case
it is an Anglicized form of Novominsky, the name of a family from Uman
in the Ukraine. On coming to the United States around 1900, a member of
this family changed his name to Norman, after which some relatives in
Russia adopted this name instead of Novominsky.
3. Swedish: cognate of North.
Variant (of 1): Normand.
Cognates (of 1): French.: Lenormand, Normand, Normant.
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