Vaughn

Vaughn is an anglicized Celtic name derived from the Welsh word “bychan”, a diminutive of “bach” meaning “small, little”. Vaughn started out as a byname of sorts and as a piece of a person’s full name as in Dafydd Vaughn ap Gwilym which would translate to “David the little (or younger) son of William”. Similar to how English surnames use the Sr./Jr. bynames to distinguish between father and son. Vaughn would have also been used as a nickname to describe a small/short man. In medieval England and Wales there existed a high level of illiteracy and dialects varied greatly from region to region. As surnames began to be recorded for identification (for the purposes of taxation) it really came down to how the individual scribe wrote down the name as he heard it. This is how surnames morphed from seemingly disparate words (i.e., Bychan –> Vaughn) into how we’re used to seeing them today in their anglicized forms. The Vaughn surname first appeared in writing in the early 13th century (rendered as Vehan) in southeastern Wales. Americans have been using surnames as given names for well over a century but it is particularly trendy today. From what we can tell Vaughn is only used in the United States, Canada and Australia (and only with a “small” amount of frequency).