A male name. Old German brun ‘brown’; has survived in Germany, probably on account of Bruno of Cologne (1030­1101), founder of the Carthusian Order, who was held in great reverence, though not actually canonized until the 16th C. Bruno occurs in England from time to time (e.g. Bruno Ryves, Dean of Wolverhampton 1669), probably always as a borrowed name. But the cognate Old English brun was also used as a christian name both before and after the Norman Conquest until at least the end of the 13th C, and was probably the ancestor of some examples of the surname Brown (most of which, however, come from the common nickname le brun the brown) and certainly of the less common Brownson.

Mostly, as at first, a German name, it is occasionally—cf. the similar Carlo—bestowed in England and, more frequently, in the U. S. A. ‘Brown’ in Teutonic, it was, originally, a nickname: Brunn is a frequent Norse nickname, as E. H. Lind’s magistral Norsk-Isländska Personbinamn, 1920-21, makes abundantly clear. (Cf. the remarks at Blanche.) Its fame arose from that of that monk of Cologne who, in C11, founded the Carthusian order.

A Teutonic name, meaning: Brown.