Family name origins & meanings
- English (mainly southeastern) : variant of Hook (in the occupational or topographic and habitational senses), with the addition of the agent suffix -er.
- Congregational clergyman Thomas Hooker (1586?–1647) sailed from England with John Cotton and Samuel Stone and arrived in Boston in 1633. He led the 1635 migration of most of his congregation to Hartford in the Connecticut Valley. Thomas is the earliest known entrant, but the name Hooker is common and was also introduced independently by others during the 17th and 18th centuries.