What Does The Surname Brainard Mean?

Nobody knows.

I once asked a man interested in the etymology of surnames, and he suggested it might mean "Raven-like" in Welsh.

The thing about Brainard -- and the names related to it -- Brainerd and Brainyrd -- is that they appeared spontaneously in the British colony of Connecticut in the middle of the 17th century. The name doesn't exist in Britain or the Americas or anywhere that we can trace, before that.

The progenitor of the Brainard / Brainerd / Brainyrd clan was a Daniel Brainard, born in about 1641, probably in England. He appears to have arrived as an indentured servant, at about age 7, in the American colony of Connecticut.

It is likely that Daniel's own parents were illiterate and may not have had a consistent idea of how to spell their own name. Daniel's own children and grandchildren varied how they wrote their surname (hence the variety of spellings today).

There is a family tradition (not independently documented) that Daniel came from either Brentwood or Braintree in Essex, so his name may be a corruption of one of those placenames.

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