Family name origins & meanings
- German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) : nickname for someone with a copious or otherwise noticeable head of hair, from Middle High German hār ‘hair’, German Haar ‘hair’.
- German : metonymic occupational name for someone who worked with raw flax (Middle High German har) in the production of linen.
- North German and Dutch : topographic name for someone who lived by a swamp, from Middle Low German hōr, hār ‘dirt’, ‘mud’.
- Probably a shortened form of Dutch van Haar, a habitational name for someone from Ter Haar in Groningen or any of three places named De Haar (in Drente, Overijssel, and Gelderland).