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.