my greatgrandmothers mothers maiden name was Moss, and that side of my family is German, but i dont know about the whole side…And why have i heard that the surname originates in other countries such as England i think, and why would there be black people with that last name too?
Best Answer
Moss Name Meaning and History
1. English and Welsh: from the personal name Moss, a Middle English vernacular form of the Biblical name Moses.
2. English and Scottish: topographic name for someone who lived a peat bog, Middle English, Old English mos, or a habitational name from a place named with this word. (It was not until later that the vocabulary word came to denote the class of plants characteristic of a peatbog habitat, under the influence of the related Old Norse word mosi.)
3. Americanized form of Moses or some other likesounding Jewish surname.
4. Irish (Ulster): part translation of Gaelic Ó Maolmhóna ‘descendant of Maolmhóna’, a personal name composed of the elements maol ‘servant’, ‘tonsured one’, ‘devotee’ + a second element which was assumed to be móin (genitive móna) ‘moorland’, ‘peat bog’.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195081374
http://www.ancestry.com/facts/mossfamil…
Moses Name Meaning and History
Jewish; also Welsh and English: from the Biblical name borne the Israelite leader who led the Israelites out of Egypt, as related in the Book of Exodus. The Hebrew form of the name, Moshe, is probably of Egyptian origin, from a short form of any of various ancient Egyptian personal names, such as Rameses and Tutmosis, meaning ‘conceived (a certain god)’. However, very early in its history it acquired a folk etymology, being taken as a derivative of the Hebrew root verb mšh ‘draw (something from the water)’, and was associated with a story of the infant Moses being discovered among the bullrushes Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2: 1–10). Moses is the usual English spelling. As a Welsh family name, it was adopted among Dissenter families in the 18th and 19th centuries. As a North American family name, it has absorbed forms of the name from other languages, for example Moise and Moshe.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195081374
http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Mosesfami…
Moss is English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish (Ulster) each with varying meanings. As for your greatgrandmother being German, well that is the problem with not knowing the whole story about that side of the family…there could be some things you have yet to learn that could unlock that mystery…that is the problem with researching surnames in isolation, or in the absence of facts about your ancestors. You will need to research you ancestor to learn the origin of the surname in relationship to your family.
Now, as for why there would be black people with the same name? Well, after emancipation the slaves either took the names of their owners, someone they admired or just a name they liked and that was the name the used and most be have seen no reason to change them after all these years because they probably didn’t have surnames when they came here and if they did if was so long ago they were long forgotten…sad but true.
Sources given.
Other Answers (3)
Moss Name Meaning and History
English and Welsh: from the personal name Moss, a Middle English vernacular form of the Biblical name Moses.
English and Scottish: topographic name for someone who lived a peat bog, Middle English, Old English mos, or a habitational name from a place named with this word. (It was not until later that the vocabulary word came to denote the class of plants characteristic of a peatbog habitat, under the influence of the related Old Norse word mosi.)
Americanized form of Moses or some other likesounding Jewish surname.
Irish (Ulster): part translation of Gaelic Ó Maolmhóna ‘descendant of Maolmhóna’, a personal name composed of the elements maol ‘servant’, ‘tonsured one’, ‘devotee’ + a second element which was assumed to be móin (genitive móna) ‘moorland’, ‘peat bog’.
> And why have i heard that the surname originates in other countries such as England i think,
Because some of them do.
> and why would there be black people with that last name too?
Black people tend to have English surnames. They got them in 1865. (Ill leave why that was the year as an exercise to you.) They usually took the names of their former owners, or someone they admired, or their trade.
England and Ireland.
Black people could have married into this name perhaps
Moss
This longestablished surname, widespread both in England and Ireland, has two distinct possible sources as an English surname, and a further interpretation when found in the latter country. From an early date, Moss has been used in Ireland as a partial translation of the Old Gaelic "OMaolmona", descendant of the devotee of Maolmona, from "O", grandson, male descendant of, with "maol", literally meaning "tonsured one", ut used here in the transferred sense of "devotee, follower", and the saints name "Mona", from "Munnu". St. Munnu (died 635) served for a time on the Scottish island of Iona and then founded a monastery at Taghmon, County Wexford. The substitution of "Moss" for "(Maol)mona" is based on the erroneous translation of "mona" as "moorland, turf bog". The name is more correctly Anglicized as "Mulmona" and "Malmona" in Counties Fermanagh and Donegal. The christening was recorded in Ireland of Elizabeth, daughter of Michael and Joane Moss, at Holy Trinity (Christ Church), Cork, on September 14th 1661. Eleven bearers of the name appear on a "List of Irish Famine Immigrants arriving at the Port of New York (1846 1851)": among them Francis Moss, aged 21 yrs., who embarked from Liverpool on the ship "Cambridge" on May 8th 1846. The English surname is primarily topographical in origin from residence a swamp or peat bog, deriving from the Olde English pre 7th Century "mos", bog, morass, but it may occasionally derive from "Moss(e)", the normal medieval form of the Hebrew given name "Moses". The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Almer Mosse, which was dated circa 1153, in the "Pipe Rolls of Norfolk", during the reign of King Stephen, known as "Count of Blois", 1135 1154. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.
Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/moss#ix…
This tells you how people got surnames http://familytimeline.webs.com/originsof…
This is a surname that I have been researching today, well the family history of a family who has the name Moss
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