Frequency: (454)
(number of times this surname appears in a sample database of 88.7 million names, representing one third of the 1997 US population)
North German: 1. dialect variant of Hoff ‘farm’. 2. from Middle Low German haf ‘sea’, ‘lagoon’, most likely denoting someone living by one of the lagoons on the Baltic coast, German Haff.
See the Key to the Dictionary or consult the General Introduction for further explanation.
