Word.ws English Dictionary

Penn

Penn proper noun: a surname.

Proper noun

Penn

  1. A surname.
  2. A village and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, previously in Chiltern district (OS grid ref SP9094).
    • High on a ridge of the Chilterns stands the village from which a celebrated Buckinghamshire family took its name. It was the home of the ancestors, and some of the descendants, of William Penn, the Quaker who in 1682 founded Pennsylvania in America.1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 312
  3. A hamlet in Wootton Fitzpaine parish, west Dorset (OS grid ref SY3495).
  4. A western suburb of Wolverhampton, West Midlands (OS grid ref SO8996).
  5. An unincorporated community in Ramsey County, North Dakota.
  6. An unincorporated community in Lane County, Oregon.
  7. A borough in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, named after William Penn.
  8. A number of townships in the United States, including in Illinois (2), Indiana (3), Iowa (4), Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio (2), and Pennsylvania (12), listed under Penn Township.
  9. (informal) University of Pennsylvania
    • Well, he [Donald J. Trump] did go to Penn. Whether he got in on merit is a whole other question.2025 April 21, Gail Collins, Bret Stephens, “Only 1,370 Days to Go”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
    Synonyms:
    UPenn

Synonyms of Penn

Origin of Penn

* As an English surname, named after various places such as Penn in Buckinghamshire or Staffordshire, of Brythonic origin, from Proto-Brythonic *penn (“(hill) top, head”). * Also as an English surname, from the noun pen (“enclosure”). * Also as an English surname, spelling variant of Parnell. * As a German surname, from Sorbian pien (“tree stump”), from Proto-Slavic *pьňь.

Words formed from Penn

Phrases with Penn

Words that rhyme with Penn

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about Penn

What does Penn mean?
Penn means a surname.
What part of speech is Penn?
Penn is a proper noun.

Words near Penn in the dictionary

  1. penmates
  2. penmen
  3. penmesterol
  4. Penmon
  5. Penmynydd
  6. Penn
  7. Penn effect
  8. Penn effects
  9. Penn State
  10. Penn Valley
  11. Penn Yan

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Penn (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Penn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/penn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.