Family name origins & meanings
- English : from Old English bēam ‘beam’, ‘post’, a term with various applications. It denoted the beam of a loom and was therefore in some cases a metonymic occupational name for a weaver. In others it was a topographic name for someone who lived by a post or tree, or by a footbridge made from a tree trunk.
- Americanized form of German Boehm, or sometimes of Baum.