Family name origins & meanings
- German : topographic name for someone who lived by a beech tree or beech wood, a variant of Buch + the suffix -(n)er denoting an inhabitant, or a habitational name from any of various places called Buchen, for example in Baden (east of Heidelberg).
- Jewish (Ashkenazic) : occupational name for a scholar or scribe, from German Buch ‘book’, Yiddish bukh + the agent suffix -ner.