Got this off ancestry.com and plugged in some names to see what they mean... bored at work. Adelman Name Meaning and History 1. Jewish (Ashkenazic): ornamental name composed of German Adel ‘nobility’ + Mann or Yiddish man ‘man’. Compare Edel. 2. Variant of German Adelmann. andersen Name Meaning and History Danish and Norwegian: patronymic from the personal name Anders, a vernacular form of Andreas. Ariza Name Meaning and History 1. Castilianized form of Basque Aritza, a topographic name from Basque (h)aritz ‘oak’ + the article suffix -a. 2. Spanish: habitational name from a place so named in Zaragoza province in Aragón. Armstrong English and Scottish: transferred use of the surname, which originated in the Borders in the Middle Ages, probably as a nickname for a man with strong arms. Like most given names derived from surnames, it no doubt owes its adoption as a given name to a maternal maiden name, but its choice may also have been influenced by the still transparent etymology. Battier - (no name found but probably French origin.) Brooks Name Meaning and History 1. English: from the possessive case of Brook (i.e. ‘of the brook’). 2. Jewish (Ashkenazic): Americanized form of one or more like-sounding Jewish surnames. 3. Americanized spelling of German Brucks. Budinger Name Meaning and History 1. German (Büdinger): habitational name for someone from any of several places called Büdingen, in Hesse and the Saarland. 2. Dutch and Belgian: habitational name for someone from Budingen in the province of Brabant. Hayes Name Meaning and History 1. Irish: reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó hAodha ‘descendant of Aodh’, a personal name meaning ‘fire’ (compare McCoy). In some cases, especially in County Wexford, the surname is of English origin (see below), having been taken to Ireland by the Normans. 2. English: habitational name from any of various places, for example in Devon and Worcestershire, so called from the plural of Middle English hay ‘enclosure’ (see Hay 1), or a topographic name from the same word. 3. English: habitational name from any of various places, for example in Dorset, Greater London (formerly in Kent and Middlesex), and Worcestershire, so called from Old English h?se ‘brushwood’, or a topographic name from the same word. 4. English: patronymic from Hay 3. 5. French: variant (plural) of Haye 3. 6. Jewish (Ashkenazic): metronymic from Yiddish name Khaye ‘life’ + the Yiddish possessive suffix -s. HIll Name Meaning and History 1. English and Scottish: extremely common and widely distributed topographic name for someone who lived on or by a hill, Middle English hill (Old English hyll). 2. English: from the medieval personal name Hill, a short form of Hilary (see Hillary) or of a Germanic (male or female) compound name with the first element hild ‘strife’, ‘battle’. 3. German: from a short form of Hildebrand or any of a variety of other names, male and female, containing Germanic hild as the first element. 4. Jewish (American): Anglicized form of various Jewish names of similar sound or meaning. 5. English translation of Finnish Mäki (‘hill’), or of any of various other names formed with this element, such as Mäkinen, Heinämaki, Kivimäki. Jeffries Name Meaning and History English: patronymic from Jeffrey. Lowry Name Meaning and History Northern English, Scottish, and Irish: from a pet form of Lawrence. Martin Name Meaning and History 1. English, Scottish, Irish, French, Dutch, German, Czech, Slovak, Spanish (Martín), Italian (Venice), etc.: from a personal name (Latin Martinus, a derivative of Mars, genitive Martis, the Roman god of fertility and war, whose name may derive ultimately from a root mar ‘gleam’). This was borne by a famous 4th-century saint, Martin of Tours, and consequently became extremely popular throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. As a North American surname, this form has absorbed many cognates from other European forms. 2. English: habitational name from any of several places so called, principally in Hampshire, Lincolnshire, and Worcestershire, named in Old English as ‘settlement by a lake’ (from mere or mær ‘pool’, ‘lake’ + tun ‘settlement’) or as ‘settlement by a boundary’ (from (ge)mære ‘boundary’ + tun ‘settlement’). The place name has been charged from Marton under the influence of the personal name Martin. Scola Name Meaning and History Italian (Sicily): topographic name from scola, Sicilian form of scuola ‘school’, ‘retreat’; also ‘synagogue’. Taylor Name Meaning and History English and Scottish: occupational name for a tailor, from Old French tailleur (Late Latin taliator, from taliare ‘to cut’). The surname is extremely common in Britain and Ireland, and its numbers have been swelled by its adoption as an Americanized form of the numerous equivalent European names, most of which are also very common among Ashkenazic Jews, for example Schneider, Szabó, and Portnov. Ming Name Meaning and History 1. English: of uncertain origin; possibly from a reduced form of the personal name Dominick. 2. Chinese : from the name of Meng Mingshi, a senior minister of the state of Qin in the Spring and Autumn period (722–481 bc). His descendants adopted the first character of his given name, which means ‘bright’, as their surname. Morey Name Meaning and History 1. Irish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Mórdha (see Moore). 2. English (of Norman origin): from the Old French personal name Mory, a short form of Amaury (see Emery). Alexander Name Meaning and History Scottish, English, German, Dutch; also found in many other cultures: from the personal name Alexander, classical Greek Alexandros, which probably originally meant ‘repulser of men (i.e. of the enemy)’, from alexein ‘to repel’ + andros, genitive of aner ‘man’. Its popularity in the Middle Ages was due mainly to the Macedonian conqueror, Alexander the Great (356–323 bc)—or rather to the hero of the mythical versions of his exploits that gained currency in the so-called Alexander Romances. The name was also borne by various early Christian saints, including a patriarch of Alexandria (adc.250–326), whose main achievement was condemning the Arian heresy. The Gaelic form of the personal name is Alasdair, which has given rise to a number of Scottish and Irish patronymic surnames, for example McAllister. Alexander is a common forename in Scotland, often representing an Anglicized form of the Gaelic name. In North America the form Alexander has absorbed many cases of cognate names from other languages, for example Spanish Alejandro, Italian Alessandro, Greek Alexandropoulos, Russian Aleksandr, etc. (For forms, see Hanks and Hodges 1988.) It has also been adopted as a Jewish name.
No I think ming is his surname, in china he is ming-yao. But his name is done the western name here in the Us and hence is called Yao Ming.
Actually, Yao Ming's name is actually in the same order as his Chinese name. He didn't adopt the western format for names. So his last name IS Yao. Unlike a typical Chinese person's name whose name might be say, Bob Chen.
http://www.nba.com/playerfile/yao_ming/ his name is Yao Ming here and that's the only way I've ever seen it written. Get over yourselves and stop harping on me for using Ming instead of Yao. If you want to see what it means then look it up yourself, post it here to share it and stop complaining.
Yao (Chinese: 姚; pinyin: Yáo) is one of the most ancient Chinese surnames. It is usually romanised as Yiu in Cantonese. It is ranked 101st in the Hundred Family Surnames, and as the 41st most common surname in Mainland China.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yao_(surname) 姚氏的来源有三： 1 出自妫姓。相传五帝之一的舜有生于若水，居于地丘的后代， 因生在姚墟，其后子孙便以地为氏，称为姚氏。又相传舜在当帝之前 ，四岳曾向帝尧推荐过陶唐氏，舜继承王位后曾把自己的两个女儿嫁 给他，让他们居住在妫河边。他们的子孙有留在妫河边居住的，便以 妫为姓。武王灭商后，找到了帝舜的后裔妫满，武王把他的大女儿嫁 给妫满，并且封他于陈。传至年仲敬氏时因避王莽乱居于吴郡，改姓 为妫。传五世后，复改为姚姓。 2 出自子姓。据路史记载，春秋时有姚国，为商族的后代，他的子孙 便以国为氏，称位姚氏。 3 他族改为姚姓。据有关史料所载，西晋时有羌族首领姚戈重，本是 汉时西羌烧当氏的后人，他们自称是帝舜的后代，故而改姓姚 http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/115965835.html
