Family name origins & meanings
- English : nickname for someone with some fancied resemblance to a bittern, perhaps in the booming quality of the voice, from Middle English, Old French butor ‘bittern’ (a word of obscure etymology).
- English and German : metonymic occupational name for a dairyman or seller of butter, from Old English butere ‘butter’, Middle High German buter.
- German : possibly a short form of any of the various compound names formed with Butter ‘butter’ (see 2).