The surname Dunn and Dunne, are they the same, if 2 people who didnt know each other both had either one of ..

Question

say person 1 had the surname Dunn and they met this person with the surname Dunne.

Are they related ?

Answer 1

Dunn and Dunne are sometimes variants, sometimes not. See below.

People with the same or similar surnames are sometimes related, sometimes not. In the USA, most (not all) of the Packs share one of three ancestors, George, Samuel and Jeremiah. Whether those three were brothers or not is still a question. Most (not all) of the Cady family descend from one man, Nicholas, born in 1584.

Below:

Dunn

Irish: reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Duinn, Ó Doinn ‘descendant of Donn’, a byname meaning ‘brown-haired’ or ‘chieftain’.

English: nickname for a man with dark hair or a swarthy complexion, from Middle English dunn ‘dark-colored’.

Scottish: habitational name from Dun in Angus, named with Gaelic dùn ‘fort’.

Scottish: nickname from Gaelic donn ‘brown’. Compare 1.

Dunne

Variant spelling of Dunn; this is the usual spelling of the Irish name.

German (Dünne): nickname for a slender, skinny person, from Middle High German dünne ‘thin’.

German (Dünne): habitational name, for example from Dünne near Herford, Westphalia.

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4

Answer 2

Yes, as you stated "Dunn and Dunne are the same name with just a variance in the spelling.  If you look long and hard enough you will find that two people with the same name have a common set of grand parents in a generation in the past. I mean  perhaps many "Greats" in front of Grand Parents but if you go back far enough you will find the information. As you search back further and further you will be searching a smaller and smaller population so it gets more likely that you will locate the information in the next earlier generation.

Answer 3

?

Answer 4

In the past people often couldn't read and write so how they spelled their name wasn't important to them, for example I have a family in England in the 1800's who spelled their name both Levi and Levy.

So yes, Dunn and Dunne could be related although if they met in modern times I would think that their relationship would be very distant.

Answer 5

they could be -- they might even be siblings or children and parents -- my great grandfather used "aaf" in his last namethen changed it to "oaff"; grandfather used "oaf" ; and my father went back to "oaff".

These were folks who were educated, but they all had their own idea how the name was supposed to be spelled.  

Certainly, Dunn and Dunne could be closely related, but, probably, they are no more related than "Dun" and "Bradstreet"

Answer 6

yes- just depends on how far back you go-  Dunn was the last name of my great, great grandmother.