Barnard

Barnard is an English surname which derived from the surname Bernard, and was brought after the Norman Conquest. Occasionally It is an Anglicized form of the Irish Ó bearnáin.[1][2] The name ultimately derived from the Teutonic given name Bernhard from the element bern "bear" combined with hard "brave, hardy".

Some of the people bearing the surname Barnard are thought to have descended from those who arrived in England after the time of the Norman Conquest (1066), some of whom, it has been suggested, can be traced back to Hugo Bernard. Some of the Barnard family in England may have been Huguenots[3] who fled from the Atlantic coast region of France circa 1685 (the time of the revocation of the edict of Nantes) or earlier than that date, however the evidence for this is tenuous, as the name does not appear in lists of proven Huguenot names.[4] By contrast, the Barnard family in Holland (the western provinces of the Netherlands) can be definitively traced back to circa 1751 (Izaak Barnard)[5] of Scheveningen. Other families bearing or subsequently adopting the surname Barnard arrived as Jewish immigrants from continental Europe after 1656 [6] and are well documented.[7][8] Some of the latter branch are descendants of Rabbi Daniel Barnard of Canterbury, with recorded descendants around London,[9][10] Chatham, Dartford, Kingston upon Hull,[11] Stockton-on-Tees,[12] Bournemouth,[13] Ipswich, Norwich and in Australia.

The surname is most commonly found in Greater London and the South Eastern counties of England (most common occurrences are in Essex, East Sussex, Kent and Suffolk), and in California, Texas, Florida and New York in the United States of America.[14] It is also found in Canada, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, and occasionally in Germany.[14] It is an English or Dutch version of Bernard, from the Germanic name Bernhard or Bernhardt, composed of the elements ber(n) ‘bear’ + hard ‘brave’, ‘hardy’, ‘strong’.[15] The first syllable of the name derives from bear; Bär or Baer in German. corresponding family names are BAER, BER, BERR, BEHR, BERNHARDT, BERNARD (in France),[16] Anglicised and also found in Holland as BARNARD.