A English toponymic surname, from common nouns for someone who owned, lived in, or worked in a barn.
"The genealogist traced the Barnes family name back to an ancestor who originally farmed near a large stone barn before emigrating to America."
The English surname Barnes comes from a place on the Thames bank named after "barn," while another variant derives from Old Norse and Old English roots meaning "child." An Irish version of the name is an Anglicized form of Ó Bearáin, which originally meant "descendant of Bearán" or "spear-bearer."