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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • German : topographic name for someone who lived on a mountainside or slope, from an agent derivative of Middle High German halde ‘slope’.
  • Indian (Bengal) and Bangladeshi : Hindu (usually, Brahman) name, also written Haldar. It is probably derived from Sanskrit haladhara ‘one who holds a plow’, an epithet of Balarama, the brother of the god Krishna. Balarama is said to have used a weapon shaped like a plowshare.

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