Ney
A rare surname that is most likely a shortened or altered form of a local name ending in -ney, meaning “island,” “river meadow,” or “wet land.”
The #9,848 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 93,986 Americans shares it.
Etymology
This surname is probably locational, built from a place-name element ending in -ney. In Old English, -ey / -ney often goes back to words for an island or water-meadow, so the name would originally have meant someone from a place so described. The historical excerpts point to surnames like Blakeney and Blankney as related examples of this kind of formation, though they do not give a direct entry for Ney itself.
History
As a surname, Ney appears to be uncommon and may reflect abbreviation, spelling variation, or loss of an original longer local surname. The 19th-century surname dictionaries you provided mainly illustrate it indirectly through names ending in -ney, especially Blakeney/Blankney-type forms. Modern bearers in the United States are few, which fits a surname with limited historical spread or heavy anglicized shortening.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
English surname writers in the 1800s often grouped -ney with other old place-name endings like -ford, -ham, and -ton as a common source of local surnames.
From the historical record
“of a drunken spree. It is very well known as a slang-term applied by Europeans to Hindus, much as we call a Scotchman Sandy or Saw- ney. It is derived from the common Hindu personal name Ram- sammy, more correctly Ramaswamy, 'devotee of the god Rama.' There are other names of the same termination, such as Krishna-…”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)