WHITNEY MILLER

Mainly North American: transferred use of the surname, in origin a local name from any of various places in England named with the Middle English phrase atten whiten ey ‘by the white island’. In the 1980s its popularity as a girl's name was enhanced by the fame of the American singer Whitney Houston (b. 1963).

English and Scottish: occupational name for a miller. The standard modern vocabulary word represents the northern Middle English term, an agent derivative of mille ‘mill’, reinforced by Old Norse mylnari (see Milner). In southern, western, and central England Millward (literally, ‘mill keeper’) was the usual term. The American surname has absorbed many cognate surnames from other European languages, for example French Meunier, Dumoulin, Demoulins, and Moulin; German Mueller; Dutch Molenaar; Italian Molinaro; Spanish Molinero; Hungarian Molnár; Slavic Mlinar, etc.