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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • German : occupational name for a maker of wooden vessels, a shortened form of Becherer, the loss of the final syllable having occurred in the 15th century.
  • German : occupational name for someone who distilled or worked with pitch, for example in making vessels watertight, from an agent derivative of Middle High German bech, pech ‘pitch’.
  • Scandinavian : either the German name (see 1 and 2 above) or a variant spelling of Becker.
  • Jewish (Ashkenazic) : metonymic occupational name from Yiddish bekher ‘cup’.
  • English : topographic name, a variant of Beech with the habitational suffix -er.

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