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The beer Surname

beer Name Meaning and History

  1. English (West Country): habitational name from any of the forty or so places in southwestern England called Beer(e) or Bear(e). Most of these derive their names from the West Saxon dative case, beara, of Old English bearu ‘grove’, ‘wood’ (the standard Old English dative bearwe being preserved in Barrow). Some may be from Old English b?r ‘swine pasture’.
  2. North German and Dutch: from Middle Low German bare, Middle Dutch bere ‘bear’, applied as a nickname for someone thought to resemble the animal in some way, or as a metonymic occupational name for someone who kept a performing bear. Alternatively, it could have been a habitational name for someone who lived at a house distinguished by the sign of a bear, or from a Germanic personal name with this as the first element. See also Baer, Bahr.
  3. Respelling of Swiss German Bier.

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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The beer name in History

A unique volume of fascinating facts, statistics and commentary following the beer family name as far back in history as possible.

beer Family Facts

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Distribution of beer Families in the US in 1920
Number of beer families
 76-149
 26-75		 1-25
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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Year

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The information for this map came from Ancestry.com’s US Federal Census Collection.
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