Family name origins & meanings
- French and English : nickname for a heavy drinker, from Old French chopine, a large liquid measure (from Middle Low German schōpen ‘ladle’). The derived Old French verb chopiner has the sense ‘to tipple’, ‘to drink to excess’. Possibly, though less likely, the surname may have been acquired as a metonymic occupational name for a maker of ladles or vessels used in the casting of metal, which were also called chopines.
- French and English : nickname for a pugnacious person, from Old French chopin ‘violent blow’ (in form a diminutive of chop ‘blow’, Latin colpus, from Greek kolaphos).
- Shortened and altered form, under French influence, of Polish Szopiński (see Szopinski).