His birth was probably about 672 or 675 maybe as late as 680. His mission to Friesland commenced in 716. I had been lead to believe that the name meant an innkeeper and there is evidence to support this usage of the surname. However, I have to support George s view. My wife Anne, who has a good understanding of language and a traditional education, is sound when it comes to the Latin roots of words.
Manufacture is a word which has the same roots.
According to George Boniface, the name is tremendous in European ancient and mediaeval history, including two Saints, more than a dozen Popes, a King, an Archbishop of Canterbury, a leader of the Fourth Crusade and a Roman Governor of Imperial Africa. Hugh Boniface wrote in 1984 that the name Boniface as a surname is likely to have developed from the Saint's name given as a Christian name which later became a surname in the 12th or 13th century. He believes that there is probably a separate surname of Bonney as it occurs in parts of the country where no Boniface s are found. Some of the Bonneys in S.W.Sussex may be a family not derived from Boniface as Bonney is used in the earliest entries in the 16th century. Popes were being named Boniface some 250 years before the English Wynfrith was born.