Family name origins & meanings
- German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) : from Middle High German pulver ‘ash’, ‘dust’ (of Latin origin), German Pulver ‘powder’; a metonymic occupational name for an apothecary or herbalist who dispensed various types of medicinal powder. From the 15th century it may alternatively have denoted a manufacturer of gunpowder.
- Possibly a shortened form of Dutch van Pulver, a habitational name from a place named Pulver (meaning ‘dust’; compare 1), for example in Wormhout in West Flanders.