Explore the Family Name White

The meaning of White

1. English: from Middle English white, wit (Old English hwīt ‘white’), hence a nickname for someone with white hair or a pale complexion. In some cases it is perhaps from a Middle English survival of the Old English personal name Hwīta, a short form of names in Hwīt- (from hwīt ‘white’). The name may also be topographic, referring to someone who lived by a bend or curve in a river or road (from Old English wiht ‘bend’), the source of the placename of Great Whyte in Ramsey, Huntingdonshire (compare Wight). This name is also a variant of Wight. The surname White is also very common among African Americans. 2. Irish and Scottish: adopted for any of several Irish and Scottish Gaelic names based on bán ‘white, fair’ (see Bain 1, McElwain) or fionn ‘fair’ (see Finn 1). The English surname has been Gaelicized in Ireland as de Faoite. 3. Americanized form (translation into English) of various European surnames meaning ‘white’, for example German Weiss, French Blanc, Polish Białas (see Bialas), Slovenian Belec, or any other synonymous Slavic surname beginning with Bel-, Bev-, Biel- or Bil-. 4. Native American: translation into English and shortening of a personal name composed of a word meaning ‘white’, such as Lakota Sioux Waŋbli Ska ‘White Eagle’ (see Whiteeagle) or Tataŋka Ska ‘White Bull’ (see Whitebull). In many cases, however, this surname was probably chosen because it is a very common English surname in North America. History: Peregrine White (1620–1704) was born in Cape Cod harbor on board the Mayflower, thus becoming the first child of English descent to be born in New England. His father, William White, was the son of the rector of Barham, near Ipswich, Suffolk, England; he died in 1621 during the first winter at Plymouth Colony. John White, who came to Cambridge, MA, in 1632 and who was later one of the founders of Hartford, CT, is the ancestor of a noted American family, which included the architect Stanford White (1853–1906). The name was brought to North America from the British Isles independently by many other bearers from the 17th century onward.

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

What do people with the surname White have in common?

Spoiler alert: it's complicated. People with the same last name are usually no more genetically similar than a randomly sampled group of people from the same population. That said, people with the same surname are more likely to have similar ancestries than randomly sampled individuals. The reason is the tendency of people with similar cultural or geographical backgrounds to preferentially mate with one another. That's why people who share a surname may be more likely to share traits and tendencies in common than people within the general population. Check out the percentages below to see the prevalences of tastes, habits, and traits of people with your surname compared with prevalences among 23andMe users.