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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : occupational name for someone who looked after animals, Middle English bester, from beste ‘beast’ (see Best).
  • German : habitational name for someone from a place called Beste.
  • Slovenian (Gorenjska; also Bešter) : probably a derivative of Vester 3, a reduced form of the personal name Silvester. Replacement of initial V- with B- is quite common in Slovenian surnames.

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