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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : occupational name for a slaughterer of animals, from Middle English slahter (an agent derivative of slaht ‘killing’).
  • English : topographic name from Middle English sloghtre ‘boggy place’, or a habitational name from a place named with this term (Old English slōhtre), for example Upper and Lower Slaughter in Gloucestershire.
  • English : topographic name for someone who lived by a blackthorn or sloe, Old English slāhtrēow.

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