Family name origins & meanings
- English (chiefly Devon) : from Middle English pass(en) ‘to pass or go across’ + more ‘marsh’, ‘fen’, a nickname, bestowed no doubt on someone who lived on the far side of a tract of moorland near the main settlement, or for someone who was familiar with the safe routes across a moor.
- English (chiefly Devon) : several early forms have -e- in place of -o- in the second syllable, and may have a different origin. They could derive from an Anglo-Norman French nickname for a seafarer, Passemer, from passe(r) ‘to cross’ (as above) + mer ‘sea’, ‘ocean’, or the second element could be from Old English mere ‘lake’, ‘marsh’.