Anyone know what the roots of the last name Osman are?

Answer 1

Hey Immortal,

Family Search.com agrees with Swyrich, English.
Swyrich.com says:

Origin: English

Spelling variations of this family name include: Osmond, Osmund, Osmont, Osmonde, Osmand, Osman, Ozment and many more.

First found in Norfolk, where the Osman family was seated from early times, having been granted lands by Duke William of Normandy, their liege Lord, for their distinguished assistance at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 A.D.

Some of the first settlers of this family name or some of its variants were: Adam Osman, who immigrated to Virginia in 1623; John Osmond, who settled in Maryland in 1749; David Osmond, who came to Nova Scotia in 1793; Lewis Osmond, who settled in Philadelphia in 1793.

Answer 2

Last names don't just come from one country. In this case, for instance, Osman could be an English name (a variation of Osmond), or it could be Turkish, relating to the Ottoman Sultan of the same name. I'm sure there are many other origins as well.

If you want to know the origins of the specific family, however, you'll actually have to do research and work backwards from the known to the unknown. If you check the resolved questions here, you'll see countless answers on how to get started, and I won't bother repeating what's already been said ad nauseum.

Good Luck!

Answer 3

What the others are trying to say is that names are fluid and can appear and disappear across the world without any ties to anyone else having that same surname. Surnames are a relatively recent invention with many countries only adopting them in the beginning of the 1800s. Surnames developed in Scandinavia that also appear in Belgium, but the people having the same surname have no relationship to each other at all. French surnames also appear in Spain, Portugal, Italy and any other country where Latin used to be in common use.

The bottom line is that this name, like many others, could have come from a dozen different places. The only way you know where YOUR line originated is to do the legwork and find out where your immigrant ancestor was born, then trace back as far as you can to find where his ancestors originated. It's hard to go earlier than 1400 unless your ancestors were nobles or landed gentry because surnames get scarce at that point. But you're not likely to find your own lineage on the internet unless you're lucky enough to have a genealogist for a distant cousin...or have a recent link to one of the Osmonds of Provo Utah.

Answer 4

Most Osman immigrants to the US (16) came from Liverpool, England and Queenstown

http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?gsfn=&gsln=Osman&gspl=1&rank=0&ti=0&o_xid=0041612601&o_lid=0041612601&gl=allgs

Answer 5

The author of the on-line article below seems to think the name originated somewhere in North Africa, possibly Morocco, and then spread north into western Europe (Spain, France, Germany, England and others) and east into the regions in and around Italy.

http://members.aol.com/eleanorcol/OzmentEthno.html

You may want to pay ancestry.com a visit and go to their message boards. Look for the name in their list of surnames. You can pose questions there. Who knows, you might even find a direct answer to your question. I have found out all sorts of interesting information about my immediate family members at that site. One message traced back one branch of my father's family back more than 200 years. So I was able to learn the names, place of birth and death, and date of birth and death of about six generations of grandparents in that line.

Answer 6

Hope this link helps you it says the name is actually Turkish,
http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/Fact.aspx?&fid=10&ln=osman&fn=

Answer 7

i know some turkish men called osman
but I'm not sure whether it is a surname or first name