Whitehorn Family History

English (southern): nickname from a Middle English compound of uncertain meaning. The first element is Middle English whit ‘white fair or comely’ and the second is Middle English horn which had many senses: ‘horn of an animal; drinking horn; the supposed horn of a cuckold; fingernail or toe-nail’. Compare the English name Pinhorn where the first element is probably Middle English pin ‘pin something small or worthless’.

Seltén suggests that horn in compounds like these denotes ‘head’. Whitehorn might have denoted someone with a white head of hair but this sense of horn is otherwise unknown in English.

The name has nothing to do with the town of Whithorn in Wigtownshire Scotland though it might in theory represent an unidentified placename or place description of the same origin from Old English hwīt ‘white’ + ærn ‘building’.