Blunt
A surname that most likely began as a nickname for a fair-haired or blond person, with some historical overlap in medieval spellings like Blount and Blund.
The #4,259 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 37,082 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Blunt is usually treated as a nickname surname from a word meaning “blond,” “fair,” or “light-haired,” rather than from the modern adjective “blunt.” Historical forms include Blund, Blound, Blunt, and Blount, and several early writers link these to Anglo-Norman or Old French forms used for complexion. In that older naming system, the word could function much like the native English surname White, describing appearance rather than character.
History
Medieval records show the surname in several spellings, especially Blund, Blunt, and Blount, and older genealogical dictionaries often treat them as closely related or interchangeable forms. Lower notes that some Irish families later translated the name into White, which supports the old sense “fair” or “blond.” The spelling Blunt is now the standard modern form, though Blount remains a separate but related historical surname in many records.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some 19th-century surname writers explicitly grouped Blunt with other complexion-based names like White, Black, and Brown, showing how differently medieval nicknames were understood before modern spelling stabilized.
From the historical record
“Hunts, so pronounced. BLUNT. See Blount. Robert and Wil- liam Blundus were tenants in chief under the Conqueror. Domesd. BLYTH. BLYTIIE. 1. Towns in York- shire and Northumberland, and rivers in several counties. 2. The adjective hl'ithe, merry, gay ; whence Blythmau. BLYTIIMAM. See Blytli. BLYTON. A parish in co.…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United KingdomNotable people named Blunt
- Emily Blunt (b. 1983)
Sourced from Wikidata; linked to their Wikipedia page.