Explore the Family Name Offen

The meaning of Offen

1. German: variant of Off. 2. German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): from Middle High German oven, German Ofen ‘oven’, a metonymic occupational name for a baker, or, as a German name, for someone who had charge of the communal village oven and was empowered to exact payment in kind for its use. It may also be a topographic name for someone who lived near a kiln or in an area or field named with this word. 3. German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): habitational name from Buda in Hungary, now part of Budapest, known in Middle High German as Ofen. 4. English (Kent and Sussex): probably a habitational name from Offham, Kent, which originally denoted ‘Offa’s homestead’ (Old English personal name Offa + Old English hām), or from Offham, in South Stoke, Sussex, which either had the same sense or denoted ‘Offa’s land in a river bend’ (Old English hamm).

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