Surname Spotlight: Browning

A coat of arms was granted to a particular family line, not to everyone named Browning, so a shared surname is a clue rather than a claim to the arms.

What Browning means

Families named Browning share an English surname with a long history. Smith's 1956 dictionary gives the meaning “the son of Brun (brown); descendant of Bruning (brown, friend)”.

It is a patronymic: it named a person after a father or forebear. Browning ranked 797 in the 2010 US Census, with 43,329 people answering to the name. It sits within the 1,000 most common last names in the country. Names that sound alike, such as Brüning, are easily confused in old records.

For the full story, order the Browning surname pack.