Aaron
A Hebrew biblical surname originally taken from the given name Aaron, borne especially by Jewish families.
The #2,241 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 18,969 Americans shares it.
Etymology
This surname comes from the biblical personal name Aaron, the name of Moses’ brother in the Hebrew Bible. In surname use, it usually means “son of Aaron” or more broadly a family name adopted from that given name. Older writers sometimes gave a folk etymology for the biblical name itself, but for the surname the main point is its derivation from the Hebrew personal name.
History
Nineteenth-century surname writers describe Aaron as a common Jewish surname in England and note that they had not found it as a medieval English surname. It appears in English records by the early modern period, and it later spread through Jewish communities in Britain and beyond. The name is also found in the United States, where it has remained relatively uncommon as a surname.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some early English surname books explicitly treat Aaron as a Jewish family name rather than an old native English surname.
From the historical record
“Attree, Abarrow, Abridge, Aljrook, &c. AARON. AARONS. A common Jew- ish sumarae. ABA DAM. A recent resumption of the old baronial name of Ap- or Ab- Adam. See B. L. G. ABAXK. See Banks. ABARROW. ABAROUGH. At or near a barrow or tumulus See Atte.”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom