KING Family Members

​​​Page last updated 5 August 2022.
Meaning of… (See https://www.familysearch.org/en/surname): 
KING:
  • English: nickname from Middle English king ‘king’ (Old English cyning, cyng), perhaps acquired by someone with kingly qualities or as a pageant name by someone who had acted the part of a king or had been chosen as the master of ceremonies or ‘king’ of an event such as a tournament, festival or folk ritual. In North America, the surname King has absorbed several European cognates and equivalents with the same meaning, for example German König (see Koenig) and Küng, French Roy , Slovenian, Croatian, or Serbian Kralj, Polish Krol. It is also very common among African Americans. It is also found as an artificial Jewish surname.
  • English: occasionally from the Middle English personal name King, originally an Old English nickname from the vocabulary word cyning, cyng ‘king’.
  • Irish: adopted for a variety of names containing the syllable rí (which means ‘king’ in Irish).
  • Native American: loose translation into English (and shortening) of a personal name such as Cheyenne Vehoeso ‘Little Chief’, which is from a diminutive of veho ‘chief’. See also Chief.
  • Chinese: variant Romanization of the surname 金, possibly based on the Foochow dialect spoken in Fuzhou in Fujian province, see Jin 1.
  • Chinese: Cantonese form of the surnames 景, 荊, 敬 and 經, also variant Romanization of the surnames 井, see Jing 1-4 and 6.
  • Chinese: possibly from Cantonese form of the Chinese name 敬 (meaning ‘esteem, respect’), a monosyllabic personal name, or part of a disyllabic personal name of some early Chinese immigrants in the US.
  • History: As a name of Swiss German origin, originally spelled König or Koenig (see 1 above), the surname King is quite common among the American Mennonites. They are descendants of several immigrants who settled in PA (in the 18th century) and in OH (in the first half of the 19th century).

KING family pages done are:
m. = maiden name
h1. = surname of first husband​
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