Pepin
A surname from the old French personal name Pepin, best known from the royal Carolingian family.
The #7,075 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 65,260 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Most sources treat Pepin as coming from an old Germanic personal name, usually linked to a nickname built on a sound like pip/pip-pip, suggesting a chirp, whistle, or squeak. Some 19th-century writers also connected it with a French word for a gardener or nursery-man, or with a word meaning a seedling fruit such as an apple grown from seed, but that explanation is less certain. In surname use, Pepin is best understood as a family name taken from the medieval personal name.
History
Pepin was the name of important early medieval Frankish rulers, including Pepin of Landen and Pepin le Bref, so the personal name had high status in France. English surname references note that it was never strongly naturalized in England, though related forms such as Pippin and Pipping occur. The surname is especially familiar through French and French-Canadian usage.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The name Pepin is historically tied to the Carolingian dynasty, the family that preceded Charlemagne.
From the historical record
“PEPIN, the common French Pepin, Pdpin : I from the O.L.Ger. Pip{p)in (Cp. the A.-Sax. Pippen and Dut. Pippin) [prob. a , dim. nickname f. the onomatopoetic word seen in mod. L.Ger. and Dut. piepen, Dan.-Norw. pipe, Swed. pipa {pip, a, chirp, whistle), Fr. papier, piper, Lat. pipare, Gr. TTiTTrifeii', to pip, chirp…”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)