Family name origins & meanings
- German : patronymic from a personal name (Latin Gallus) which was widespread in Europe in the Middle Ages (see Gall 2).
- German : nickname for someone in the service of the monastery of St Gallen, or a habitational name for someone from the city in Switzerland so named.
- English : variant of Gallier.
- Hungarian (Gallér) : from gallér ‘collar’, hence a metonymic occupational name for a taylor, in particular a maker of military garments.
- Jewish (Ashkenazic) : from German Galle ‘bile’, ‘gall’, with the agent suffix -er. This surname seems to have been one of the group of names selected at random from vocabulary words by government officials.