Tarrant
A surname of place origin, referring to someone from one of the Dorset places called Tarrant.
The #7,519 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 69,773 Americans shares it.
Etymology
This name is mainly locational: it comes from the Dorset place-name Tarrant, used for several villages and parishes. The place-name is connected with the River Tarrant, and older scholarship linked that river name to a Celtic word for a noisy or thunderous sound. In other words, the surname originally meant something like “from Tarrant.”
History
Historical sources record medieval forms such as de Tarento and de Tarente, showing the surname was already established as a place-name by the 13th century. The spelling has produced variants such as Tarratt and Tarret, which later writers treated as corruptions or phonetic spellings. The name remains most strongly associated with Dorset in England.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Several Dorset parishes share the name Tarrant, which is why the surname can point to more than one specific village rather than a single ancestral place.
From the historical record
“TARRANT (Celt.) Bel. to Tarrant (Dorset), named t. the River, 9-i3th cent. Tarent [f. (with post-« intrus. -/) the early form ofWel. (and Corn.)Yara«(«, noise, thunder = Bret, taran, noise-maker = Ir. toran, 'a sounding or great noise' (E.Ir. torand, thunder) = Gael, torunn, 'a loud, murmur- , ing noise'] Tarent…”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)