KOE. This surname may be the 0-Sax., North Frisian, and Danish ko, a cow. Mr. Ferguson, after alluding to surnames derived from the bear, the wolf, the boar, the horse, and the dog, and giviug a rationale of their origin, says : " But the cow — the innocent and ungainly cow — what is there in her usefid and liomely life that could inspire seutiments of reverence in a fierce and warlike people? The honour which was paid to her was from a more ancient and a more deeply-seated source. From the time when Israel, tainted v'ith Egyptiou superstition, set up a golden calf, and said, ' These be thy gods which brought thee out of the land of Egjt '— and from who can tell how many ages before that time, the cow as the type of the teeming mother earth, has been an object of human idolatry. In tlie Northern system of mythology she is not, like the bear, the wof,"or the boar, sacred to any particular divinity, but appears — in what seems to be a fragment of a more ancient myth — as mysteriously connected with the first cause and origin of all things. Grimm has remarked (Dciitsch Myth. p. 631), that the Sanscrit and Persian words for a cow correspond with a word signifying the earth. Aud he further observes upon the connection between Rinda, a name for the earth in Northern mythology, and the Germ, rind, an ox. I am unable, in the absence of proof derived from corresponding ancient names, to say whether any of our names deri\-ed from the cow are to be referred to this remote origin."

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.