Bunny is an uncommon English surname and a spelling form of Bunney. The principal surname dictionaries give two possible, independent origins: a habitational name for someone associated with Bunny in Nottinghamshire, and a possible descriptive nickname from an Old French word for a swelling or lump. The familiar modern associations with rabbits and the personal nickname Bunny do not establish how a particular family acquired the surname.
Meaning and Origin
The 2016 Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland cross-refers Bunny to Bunney. The Dictionary of American Family Names then gives two explanations for Bunney: an English habitational origin from the Nottinghamshire place, and a possible nickname origin from Old French bugne or beugne, “swelling.” The dictionary entry reproduced by Geneanet presents both explanations and labels the nickname derivation as possible rather than certain.
These alternatives should not be blended into a single story. A habitational Bunny and a nickname-derived Bunny could have arisen independently, and the spelling alone cannot tell which explanation applies to an individual line. Nor does one origin have to account for every present-day bearer.
The Nottinghamshire Habitational Origin
For the habitational explanation, the surname points to Bunny, Nottinghamshire, south of Nottingham. In practical terms, the byname identified a person by association with that place—often because the person had moved elsewhere—not because the family name literally meant an animal.
The place-name is much older than the modern surname spelling. Open Domesday records Bunny as a settlement in Rushcliffe hundred in 1086, with 28 households, a church, a mill, meadow and arable resources. The Domesday spelling was Bonei. In A. D. Mills's interpretation, reproduced in a University of Nottingham place-name study, the name is probably Old English būne “reed” plus ēg “island” or dry ground in marshland. Its practical sense is therefore approximately “island or marshland rise where reeds grow.”
That literal interpretation belongs first to the locality. A person surnamed Bunny was identified through the place-name; the surname did not describe that person as a reed or an island.
A Possible Old French Nickname Origin
The second dictionary explanation derives Bunney, and therefore potentially some Bunny lines, from Old French bugne or beugne, “swelling.” On this interpretation, the original byname referred to a noticeable lump or swelling. It is a descriptive or nickname origin, not a location-based one.
This derivation remains explicitly qualified as possible in the surname dictionaries. It should not be converted into a confident claim about a particular ancestor's body or appearance. Medieval descriptive bynames could become hereditary after their original relevance had disappeared, and later bearers did not necessarily share the characteristic that first prompted the name.
Historical Forms and the Bunny–Bunney Relationship
The strongest supported spelling relationship is between Bunny and Bunney: the Oxford surname dictionary handles the former under the latter. Local evidence also shows that the name of the Nottinghamshire village itself varied. The Southwell and Nottingham Church History Project, supported by the University of Nottingham, records the place forms Bune, Bonei or Boneya, later Boney, and both Bunny and Bunney on 18th-century memorials.
Those place-name forms are not automatically hereditary surname variants. They show how the locality's written name changed, which helps explain why a habitational surname could occur as Bunny or Bunney. By contrast, visually similar surnames such as Bunn, Bonny, Bonnie, Boney and Bonney have their own possible histories. They should be treated as search candidates only when records connect the same people, relatives and places—not declared equivalent from spelling alone.
What the Medieval Evidence Shows
The local church history reports Anker de Boneya in 1225 in connection with a gift to Lenton Priory. The construction de Boneya is useful evidence for medieval naming by place: it means “of” or “from” the locality represented by the historical form Boneya. The same account also calls him Anker de Freshville, a reminder that medieval identifiers were not always fixed hereditary surnames in the modern sense.
This is therefore evidence for the kind of locative naming from which a habitational surname could develop, not proof that Anker was the first hereditary Bunny or the common ancestor of everyone now bearing the name. The Domesday entry likewise dates the place, not the surname.
Distinguishing Surname, Given Name and Nickname
In modern English, Bunny can be a personal nickname or given name as well as a legal family name. The older page explanation linking Bunny to Berenice belongs to that separate personal-name tradition; it is not the surname derivation given by the scholarly family-name dictionaries cited here.
For that reason, a newspaper mention of “Bunny Smith,” for example, does not document a Bunny surname, while a civil or parish record that consistently places Bunny in the family-name field may do so. The distinction matters especially in indexes that omit punctuation, reverse name order or silently expand initials.
For an English Bunny or Bunney family, the two proposed origins are best evaluated from its earliest securely linked records. An early connection to Nottinghamshire or a medieval de form can support the habitational explanation, but geography alone is not proof. The possible Old French nickname origin is harder to assign to an individual line without early documentary evidence. In either case, sharing the surname does not by itself establish shared descent.
References
- Patrick Hanks, Richard Coates, and Peter McClure, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, Oxford University Press, 2016, “Bunny” (cross-reference to “Bunney”); entry text reproduced by Geneanet and bibliographic record.
- Patrick Hanks, ed., Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, 2003, “Bunney”; entry reproduced by FamilySearch. The updated definition is also credited to the 2nd edition (Oxford University Press, 2022) on the Geneanet entry above.
- A. D. Mills, A Dictionary of British Place Names, revised edition, Oxford University Press, 2011, “Bunny,” cited in Rebecca Gregory, “Examine the value of place-names as evidence for the history, landscape and language(s) of your chosen area,” INNERVATE: Leading Undergraduate Work in English Studies 4 (2011–2012), pp. 110–124; University of Nottingham PDF.
- Anna Powell-Smith, “Bunny,” *Open Domesday*, using Domesday data created by J. J. N. Palmer and team; Phillimore reference Nottinghamshire 13,6.
- Southwell and Nottingham Church History Project, “Bunny, St Mary: History”, supported by the University of Nottingham, the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham, the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the Marc Fitch Fund.