Moss Family History

English: topographic name from Middle English mos ‘moss bog’ (Old English mos) for someone who lived at a boggy place or a habitational name from one or other of the many places so called such as Moss (Yorkshire), Mose in Quatford (Shropshire), and Moze (Essex).

English: variant of Moyse.

Irish (Ulster): adoption of the English name 1 by translation for Ó Maolmóna or Ó Maolmhóna ‘descendant of Maolmóna’ a personal name based on maol ‘servant, tonsured one, i.e. devotee’ + a second element assumed to be móin (genitive móna) ‘moorland, peat bog’ in local English ‘moss’.

German: unexplained.

Americanized form of Moses or some other similar (like-sounding) Jewish surname.