Medieval diminutive of Edward or Edmund, from 'mine Ed' becoming 'my Ned.'
Ned began as a medieval pet form of Edward or Edmund, arising through the process of 'misdivision' — where the phrase 'mine Ed' blurred to 'mine Ned,' the 'n' migrating from the possessive pronoun to the name itself, a linguistic phenomenon that also produced Nan from Ann and Nell from Eleanor. Edward itself derives from the Old English 'ead' (wealth, fortune) and 'weard' (guard), so Ned carries a lineage of protection and prosperity compressed into a single sharp syllable. It was a thoroughly English nickname for centuries before becoming a standalone name in its own right.
History's most famous Ned is almost certainly Ned Kelly, the Irish-Australian bushranger whose armored last stand at Glenrowan in 1880 made him a permanent symbol of colonial defiance in Australian culture. His iron helmet — fashioned from plough mouldboards — became one of the most recognizable images in Australian art, immortalized by Sidney Nolan in his celebrated series of paintings. In American history, Ned Buntline (born Edward Judson) was the dime novelist and showman who largely invented the mythology of Buffalo Bill, making 'Ned' a name associated with the invention of frontier legend.
R. Martin's Westeros — a character whose honor proves both his greatest virtue and his fatal flaw. Ned has enjoyed a modest but genuine revival in recent years, driven by the same appetite for short, punchy, historically rooted names that has returned Jack, Max, and Amos to nurseries. It wears no pretension, offers no ambiguity about its character, and has the rare quality of sounding equally at home in a medieval chronicle and a contemporary classroom.