Booby (this isn't spam!)
Apparently the winner of the tv show Australian Princess is called Kylie Booby, no joke. I was just genuinely interested in where this comes from? I can't find anything about a surname when I searched for it, just nicknames. I guess it's pretty rare now though as most families would have changed it.
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The ancestry website does have a UK distribution map for this name though it gives no meaning. I notice that the stronghold of the name is Somerset, as it is for the similar surname, Boobyer. This last derives from a Devon place name, Bowebear. Could Booby be a shortened form of Boobyer?
A couple of other possibilities -
Boothby, a Northern English place name. Reaney and Wilson cite an instance of a man named Hugo de Boebi in 1190, who is called Hugo de Boothby in 1205. The fact that is is a Northern name and Booby belongs to the south-west makes this a less likely prospect in my opinion.
Bouby, a French surname that may denote someone with a speech impediment.
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Thanks for your hard work :)
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