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ArchivesRe: Where does it come from?
in reply to a message by Wearne
The Somerset place-name is in fact Wearne, the same as your surname. This is the likeliest origin of your name. Otherwise it might be a variant of Warne, a Cornish place-name and surname. Warne is said to be Cornish, meaning either "swamp" or "alder trees". I imagine Wearne in Somerset has the meaning (whichever), dating from a period when the Celtic influence reached further east.
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Since writing this I've looked at the present-day distibution of this surname in Britain. It belongs almost exclusively to Cornwall. See for yourself at www.spatial-literacy.org, where you can see distribution maps for 1881 and 1998, plus some statistics.
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