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.