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The penn Surname

penn Name Meaning and History

  1. English: habitational name from various places, for example Penn in Buckinghamshire and Staffordshire, named with the Celtic element pen ‘hill’, which was apparently adopted in Old English.
  2. English: metonymic occupational name for an impounder of stray animals, from Middle English, Old English penn ‘(sheep) pen’.
  3. English: pet form of Parnell.
  4. German: from Sorbian pien ‘tree stump’, probably a nickname for a short stocky person.
  5. Americanized form of a like-sounding Jewish surname.

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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penn Family Facts

Distribution of penn Families in the US in 1920
Number of penn families
 117-232
 40-116
 1-39
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com.au from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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The information for this map came from Ancestry.com.au’s US Federal Census Collection.
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