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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : occupational name for a wool or flax comber, Middle English kem(be)stere (an agent derivative of Old English cemban ‘to comb’). Although this was originally a feminine form of the masculine kembere, by the Middle English period the suffix -stre had lost its feminine force, and the term was used to refer to both sexes. Compare Baxter, Brewster, Dexter.

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