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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English (East Anglia) : metonymic occupational name for a cobbler, or perhaps a metonymic occupational name for a maker of cobblers’ lasts (see Laster).
  • German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) : metonymic occupational name for a porter, from Middle High German last; German Last or Yiddish last ‘burden’, ‘load’.
  • Dutch : metonymic occupational name as in 2, from Middle Dutch last ‘load’, ‘burden’; or a nickname for an awkward character, from Dutch last ‘trouble’, ‘nuisance’.
  • French : habitational name from a place so named in Puy-de-Dôme.

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