Family name origins & meanings
- German : occupational name for a bailiff, later a servant in general, Middle Low German klūver (from kluven ‘to put someone in chains or handcuffs’).
- German : in northern Germany, from klaue ‘claw’, a nickname for a quick, agile man.
- German : habitational name for someone from a place called Klauen near Hildeshiem or from Klau near Aachen.
- German : in nautical slang an occupational name for someone who repaired cracked and leaking boats.
- German : in Hessen and the central Rhine area, a metonymic occupational name for someone who bred oxen, from a dialect word Klauer ‘breeding bull’.