Money
A surname with several possible roots, including a place-name connection in France and, in England, a possible nickname for someone with plenty of money.
The #5,421 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 48,091 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Money is not fully certain in origin. One line of explanation links it to French place-names such as Monnai in Orne, with an underlying connection to French monnaie and Latin moneta, meaning a mint or coinage. In England, writers also suggested a nickname sense from Middle English money/mony, meaning “many,” which could point to a well-to-do person; however, that explanation is less secure and appears in old scholarship as a possibility rather than a firm derivation.
History
The name appears in English records in various forms and was discussed by 19th-century surname scholars as a doubtful or mixed case. In some families it may have been influenced by French surname forms, while in others it may simply have been treated as an English nickname surname. Because the evidence is not decisive, modern reference works usually leave room for more than one origin.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
An old surname dictionary even grouped Money with other names whose origins were considered hard to pin down, showing that its history has long been debated.
From the historical record
“form oi Raimond [v. Raymond] MONEY (Fr.) Bel. to Monnai (Orne), France [prob. Fr. monnaie,.'Lat. moneta, a mint] MONEYPENNY (Eng.) app. for Manypenny, prob. a nickname for a well-to-do person [M.E. moni, mony, mani, O.E. monig, manig, many -f- M.E. petti, O.E. petii{n)g, a penny] Herbert Manipeni. — Hund. Rolls.…”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)