Family name origins & meanings
- English : occupational name for someone who was employed in the private living quarters of his master, rather than in the public halls of the manor. The name represents a genitive or plural form of Middle English cha(u)mbre ‘chamber’, ‘room’ (Latin camera), and is synonymous in origin with Chamberlain, but as that office rose in the social scale, this term remained reserved for more humble servants of the bedchamber.