Last name SIMON: origin and meaning

Publish date: 2024-05-04

Simon : English (Lancashire) French Walloon Breton German Dutch Hungarian northern Italian and Jewish (Ashkenazic); Spanish (Simón); Czech and Slovak (mainly Šimon); Slovenian Croatian and Rusyn (from Slovakia) (also Šimon): from the Biblical personal name Hebrew Shim‘on which is probably derived from the Hebrew verb sham‘a ‘to hearken’. In the Vulgate and in many vernacular versions of the Old Testament this is usually rendered Simeon. In the Greek New Testament however the name occurs as Simōn as a result of assimilation to the pre-existing Greek byname Sīmōn (from sīmos ‘snub-nosed’). Both Simon and Simeon were in use as personal names in western Europe from the Middle Ages onward. In Christendom the former was always more popular at least in part because of its associations with the apostle Simon Peter the brother of Andrew. In Britain there was also confusion from an early date with Anglo-Scandinavian forms of Sigmund(r) or Sigmund (see Siegmund) a name whose popularity was reinforced at the Conquest by the Norman form Simund. In North America this surname has also absorbed cognates from other languages e.g. Italian Simone Polish Szymon Albanian Simoni and Assyrian/Chaldean or Arabic Shimun Shamon or Shamoun and also their derivatives (see examples at Simons). See also Shimon.

Source : DAFN2 : Dictionary of American Family Names 2nd edition, ©2022 by Patrick Hanks and Oxford University Press
FANBI : The Oxford Dictionary if Family Names in Britain and Ireland, ©2016, University of the West of England
FANBI : The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain, ©2021, University of the West of England

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