Family name origins & meanings
- German : from a short form of the personal name Jodocus, which is either a Latinized form of a Breton name, Iodoc, borne by a 7th-century Breton saint (compare Jost and Joyce) or from a reduced form of the personal name Augustus.
- Eastern German : probably from Slavic gost ‘stranger’, ‘guest’, hence a nickname like Gast.