Short form of Vernon, from a Norman French place name meaning 'alder grove.'
Vern is a compression of Vernon, a name that crossed the English Channel with the Normans in 1066 and planted itself firmly in the English naming tradition. Vernon derives from a place in Normandy, itself named from the Gaulish vern or vernos, meaning alder tree — the water-loving tree whose wood resists rot so well that it was used for the pilings beneath medieval Venice. Place names became family names became personal names; the Vernons were a distinguished Norman family, and the surname gradually entered use as a given name, following the English habit of honoring families through forenames.
Vern emerged as the American vernacular short form in the nineteenth century. The most resonant cultural bearer is Jules Verne — the great French science fiction pioneer whose name is spelled differently but sounds identical in many pronunciations. Verne invented the template for the adventure novel as thought experiment: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days all imagined technologies and experiences that felt impossible in 1870 and prescient by 1970.
Whether intentional or not, naming a child Vern places them in loose association with humanity's most optimistic tradition of imagining the future. In American country music, Vern Gosdin carried the name with soulful authenticity through the latter twentieth century. Vern peaked in American usage in the mid-twentieth century, when it felt solidly working-class and unpretentious — the name of a mechanic, a farmer, a good neighbor.
That very quality has given it a retro warmth that is finding new appreciation. It is short, honest, and carries its syllable with quiet confidence.