Hendersons

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Members of a family or group who all share the surname of a person called Henderson
2. A collective term for several people bearing the Scottish surname Henderson, often a family unit
3. Groups of individuals sharing the Henderson surname, referred to together as a family or household

Etymology: "Henderson" is a patronymic surname meaning "son of Hendry," and "hendersons" is simply its plural, referring to several people who share the name or to a family of Hendersons. The structure is transparent: "Hendry" is a Scottish and northern English form of "Henry," and the ending "-son" is the Middle English and Old English suffix, derived from "sunu" (son), that marked a person's father in names like Johnson or Robertson. The English suffix "-son" traces back through Old English "sunu" and Proto-Germanic "sunuz" to an ancient Indo-European root meaning "son." The name itself was therefore built in English, using an older pattern of naming people after their fathers, and it followed the same route as many other surnames of the same type.