Altered form of French Daubigné, a habitational name, with fused preposition d(e) ‘from’, for someone from any of various places in France called Aubigné, including one in Deux-Sèvres, named with the Gallo-Roman personal name Albinius (a derivative of Latin albus ‘white’; compare Albin ) + the habitational suffix -acum. The surname Daubigné is found mainly in Charente-Maritime.

English (of Norman origin): variant of Daubney , a cognate of 1 above.

History: The American Dabneys are mostly descended from Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné (1552–1630), a French Huguenot poet and soldier, whose grandson Agrippa Théodore emigrated with his children to England in the early 17th century. It were Agrippa Théodore's sons and grandsons, including a son and a grandson named Cornelius, who established the Dabney families in North America in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné is listed in the (US) National Huguenot Society's register of qualified Huguenot ancestors, while in the similar register of the Huguenot Society of America his sons Cornelius, Jean, and Robert d'Aubigné, the actual settlers in North America, are listed as Huguenot ancestors.