Family name origins & meanings
- English : occupational name for an innkeeper, from Middle English (h)osteler (Old French (h)ostelier, an agent derivative of hostel, meaning a sizeable house in which guests could be lodged in separate rooms, derived from Late Latin hospitalis, from the genitive case of hospes ‘guest’). This term was at first applied to the secular officer in a monastery who was responsible for the lodging of visitors, but it was later extended to keepers of commercial hostelries, and this is probably the usual sense of the surname. The more restricted modern English sense, ‘groom’, is also a possible source.
- German : from a short form of a Germanic personal name formed with a cognate of Old High German ōst(an) (see Oest).