Family name origins & meanings
- English (Northumbria) : topographic name for someone who lived by the Wear river in northern England. The river name is ancient, occuring in the form Vedra in Ptolemy’s Geographia; it is probably a Celtic word meaning ‘water’.
- English (Northumbria) : topographic name for someone who lived near a dam or weir, a variant spelling of Ware 1, or a habitational name from a place called Weare, in Devon and Somerset, from Old English wær, wer ‘weir’.