Family name origins & meanings
- English, Portuguese, Galician, Spanish, Catalan, and French : occupational name for a shepherd, Anglo-Norman French pastre (oblique case pastour), Portuguese, Galician, Spanish, Catalan, pastor ‘shepherd’, from Latin pastor, an agent derivative of pascere ‘to graze’. The religious sense of a spiritual leader was rare in the Middle Ages, and insofar as it occurs at all it seems always to be a conscious metaphor; it is unlikely, therefore, that this sense lies behind any examples of the surname.
- German and Dutch : humanistic name, a Latinized form of various vernacular names meaning ‘shepherd’, for example Hirt or Schäfer (see Schafer).
- Americanized spelling of Hungarian Pásztor, an occupational name from pásztor ‘shepherd’.