Moore

What does the name Moore mean?

The Moore surname has a number of hypothesised points of origin, and is popular throughout the English-speaking world. The most common believed source is in England, from the Middle English 'mor', which means a heath, or bog (sometimes referring to open land, and the modern usage of the word moor) and would be given to someone living at or on one of these geographic features. In Ireland, the surname Moore can derive from an anglicisation of the Gaelic 'mordha', which is given to someone who is noble or stately. More rarely, the name Moore could be given to an Isle of Man collector of manorial rent (a moar), or as a descriptive for someone of dark complexion (a moor).

The earliest occurrence of the Moore surname in our family history documents is from 1393, and we currently have 5,446,743 records where Moore appears.