Frequency: (3269)
(number of times this surname appears in a sample database of 88.7 million names, representing one third of the 1997 US population)
English: topographic name for someone who lived by a hill with a barn on it, from Middle English barn ‘barn’ + hille ‘hill’, or a habitational name from a place named Barnhill, possibly the one near Broxton in Cheshire named with Old English bere-ærn ‘barn’ + hyll ‘hill’.
See the Key to the Dictionary or consult the General Introduction for further explanation.
