Family name origins & meanings
- North German (Öst) : from a Germanic personal name composed with a cognate of Old High German ōst(an), which denoted the area and direction of sunrise and in various personal names took on the meaning ‘shining’, ‘spring’, later ‘Easter’ and the compass point; hence also a topographic name from Middle Low German ōst ‘east’. Compare East. The -e indicates a lengthening of the preceding ō-, as the variant Ohst shows, but in more recent forms like Öst, Östmann the oe has been converted to an o-umlaut (ö).
- North German (Öst) : habitational name from any of several places so named.