Geneanet > Resources > Family Names > BAKER

Origin and popularity of the name BAKER

Origin

Baker : 1: English: occupational name from Middle English bakere Old English bæcere a derivative of bacan ‘to bake’. It may have been used for someone whose special task in the kitchen of a great house or castle was the baking of bread but since most humbler households did their own baking in the Middle Ages it may also have referred to the owner of a communal oven used by the whole village. The right to be in charge of this and exact money or loaves in return for its use was in many parts of the country a hereditary feudal privilege. Compare Miller. Less often the surname may have been acquired by someone noted for baking particularly fine bread or by a baker of pottery or bricks.2: Americanized form (translation into English) of surnames meaning ‘baker’ for example Dutch Bakker German Becker and Beck French Boulanger and Bélanger (see Belanger) Czech Pekař Slovak Pekár and Croatian Pekar.

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Source : DAFN2 : Dictionary of American Family Names 2nd edition, ©2022 by Patrick Hanks and Oxford University Press
FANBI : The Oxford Dictionary if Family Names in Britain and Ireland, ©2016, University of the West of England
FANBI : The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain, ©2021, University of the West of England

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Last name frequency

Geographic distribution of the 378,344 individuals with the name BAKER on Geneanet.

 

Most found places for the name BAKER:

    This last name in the family trees

    See below the Geneanet members' family trees which contain the last name BAKER

    wbuchanan
    (2,884 individuals)
    budconroy
    (2,176 individuals)
    tdowling
    (1,772 individuals)
    gradeless
    (1,702 individuals)

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    Variants of name BAKER

    BURCHER BERKER BERCKER BOWKER