Jan van Steenbergen:
> Dutch "-aard" means generally a person who has a certain
> characteristic. For
> example: "laf" > "lafaard" (coward).
> I doubt whether the name Hogard has anything to do with it, though.
> AFAIK there
> is no such name as Hoogaard in the Netherlands.
There is the famed village of Hoegaarden in Belgium...
John Cowan:
>> Possibly. But I would read "Hogard" as most probably "hog+ward"
>> (as in
>> "Stewart" < sty-ward. This "ward" is of course "guard", "keeper",
>> not
>> the directional suffix.
It seems so to me, from perusal of genealogy-type sites (more
commonly "Hoggard" ).
-Tone