Family name origins & meanings
- English : occupational name for someone who produced or used malt for brewing, from an agent derivative of Middle English malt ‘malt’, ‘germinated barley’ (Old English mealt).
- English (of Norman origin) : according to Reaney, a habitational name from some place in France called Maleterre, from Old French male terre ‘bad land’ (Latin mala terra).
- German : metonymic occupational name for a grain measurer or a maker of grain measures, or for a miller, from Middle High German malter, a measure of grain.
- Jewish (Ashkenazic) : unexplained.