Harvey
A surname from the old Norman personal name Herve, brought to England after the Conquest.
The #266 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 2,669 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Harvey comes from the Norman personal name Herve (also written Hervé, Hervey, and similar forms), which was used in medieval England after the Norman Conquest. The surname originally meant “son of Herve” or simply “belonging to Herve.” Older scholarship sometimes treated the name as specifically Norman, though the deeper pre-Conquest roots of the personal name are less certain.
History
The name is recorded in England by the 12th century, and early bearers often appear as "de Hervey" or "son of Hervey" in medieval documents. It later became established as a hereditary surname in England and, through migration, spread widely in the British Isles and overseas. The best-known noble Harvey line is the Hervey family of East Anglia and Ireland, noted in older peerage accounts.
Origin
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Fun fact
The surname is historically linked with the aristocratic Hervey family, whose name appears frequently in old English and Irish peerage records.
From the historical record
“which see. HARVEY. HERVEY. An ancient Nonnan personal name — TTerve. M. de Gerville in Mem. Soc. Aut. Norm., 1844, observes : " We sometimes call it Hervot . . La Hervurie signifies the habitation of Herve." As a family designation it appears in England in the XII. cent. Osbert de Hervey is styled, in the register…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom