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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Eastern German (mainly Silesian) : from a dialect variant of Klöpfer (see Klopfer).
  • German : nickname for a gossip, from Middle High German kleppern, klappern ‘to blabber, chatter, or gossip’.
  • German : from the rare Middle High German word klepper ‘knight’s horse’, probably originally a metonymic occupational name for someone who tended or bred such animals. From the 16th century, however, the term came to denote a low-grade horse, a ‘nag’, and also someone who castrated horses.
  • Jewish (Ashkenazic) : occupational name for someone who called people to the synagogue by rattling a stick, from an agent derivative of Yiddish klepn ‘to stick’.

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