Penn Family History
Penn Name Meaning
English: habitational name from either of two places called Penn (in Buckinghamshire and Staffordshire) both of which are named with Brittonic penn ‘head’ often used in hill-names. English: topographic name or metonymic occupational name from Middle English pen(n) ‘enclosure animal pen fold’ (Old English penn) for someone who lived by or worked at a fold. Examples of this surname are formally difficult to distinguish from those in 1 above. English: from a pet form of the female personal name Pernel see Parnell . English: variant of Pinn . Cornish: shortened form of Penna . South German: unexplained.7: Germanized form of Sorbian P'eń: from Lower Sorbian p'eń ‘tree stump trunk’ probably a nickname for a short stocky person.8: Breton (mainly Finistère; also Le Penn): variant of Pen and in North America (also) an altered form of this.9: Americanized form of some similar (like-sounding) Jewish surname.10: In some cases probably also an Americanized form of Slovenian Pen .1 Americanized form of the Chinese surname 彭 see Peng
Source: Dictionary of American Family Names 2nd edition, 2022