Family name origins & meanings
- Origin uncertain. It may be an altered spelling of the Irish surname Buttimer, which MacLysaght describes as a well-known County Cork name since the 16th century, from an earlier English form Botymer. Alternatively, it may be an English habitational name from either of two places, in Cumbria and Wiltshire, named Buttermere, from Old English butere ‘butter’ + mere ‘lake’. The surname, however, is absent from current English records, and of the six bearers recorded in the 1881 British census, one was born in Ireland and two in the Netherlands.