Explore the Family Name Fonda

The meaning of Fonda

1. Dutch (of West Frisian origin): apparently an altered form of Funda, which may well be a reinterpretation, due to similarity to Latin fundus ‘depth’, of Foyngha, the name of an estate managed by the ancestors of the first and only bearer of this surname in the Netherlands, who later established its variant in America. There is no evidence for the supposed Spanish origin of this surname. 2. Italian (Trieste) and Slovenian: nickname from Italian fonda, an old variant of fionda ‘sling, catapult’, or from an Italian homonym meaning ‘bag’. This form of the surname was first recorded in 1230 in Slovene Littoral. 3. Italian: possibly also a habitational name from a place called with the adjective fondo, fonda ‘deep’, for example Cavafonda ‘deep cave’ or Vallefonda ‘deep valley’. 4. Americanized form of German Funda, itself at least in part probably of Czech or Polish origin, in Czech being a nickname derived from funět ‘to pant, to gasp’. 5. In some cases probably also southwestern French: topographic name or metonymic occupational name from Spanish or Catalan fonda ‘inn’. History: Jelle Douwes Fonda, from the Foyngha estate in Eagum in the province of Friesland, used the surname Funda (spelled with u) when he married in 1641 in Amsterdam. A year later he and his wife emigrated to America. Fonda, NY, county seat of Montgomery County, is named for Jelle Fonda; his descendant, the actor Henry Fonda, donated the Dutch family Bible to the library there.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.