Hering
A surname that can come either from a personal-name root or from a fish nickname, with several European traditions overlapping.
The #9,701 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 92,328 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Hering is not straightforwardly single-source. Some 19th-century writers connect it with a baptismal or patronymic form, treating it as "the son of Haring" and relating it to older personal-name forms such as Hari, Hero, or similar Germanic short names. Others suggest a nickname or descriptive origin from the fish name herring, which appears in Old English and other Germanic languages. A further possibility, also noted in older scholarship, is a locational connection with a place-name containing an element like -ing or with a meadow-name such as Haring- in older records.
History
The name is found in medieval English records in several spellings, including Hering, Herring, and Herrin, which shows that the forms were not yet stabilized. English surname writers often treated Herring/Hering as a family-name branch distinct from the fish word, but continental scholars also record Hering as a German surname and as part of wider Germanic naming patterns. Because the same spelling can arise from different sources in different regions, modern bearers of the name may not share one single origin.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Older onomastic works note that families called Hering or Herring sometimes bore herring fish on their coats of arms, a neat visual pun on the name.
From the historical record
“now almost universally Ctark and Clarke, the professional form ad- hering to dtrk ; cC the silent agree- ntetit between tailor and Taylor. If Clark and Clarke be considered IS one name, they stand ninth”
— A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, with special American instances