Where the Lane name comes from

Lane is a surname with several unrelated origins. In Middle English it was a topographic name for someone who lived on a lane, a word for any narrow pathway, including one between houses in a town. Tax lists in Buckinghamshire in the 1400s record John atte Lane and William atte Lane, with atte doing the same work as the French de la. Low German has the same word, lane, for a narrow road, and it runs back to Old Saxon lana.

A Norman or Breton origin has also been proposed for some families, from L'Asne, perhaps a nickname meaning the ass or a place name in Normandy or Brittany. A Staffordshire Lane family claims Norman ancestry and names its earliest ancestor as Adam de Lone, living in 1315. In Ireland, Lane is an anglicized form of Gaelic surnames including Ó Laighin, from a byname meaning spear, and Ó Luain, from a byname meaning warrior. Matthys Laenen Van Pelt emigrated from Amsterdam to New Jersey in 1663, and his family appears to have shortened the name to Lane after arriving.