Family name origins & meanings
- English : nickname for a tall, thin man, from Middle English spir ‘stalk’, ‘stem’. This was apparently used as a personal name or byname, in view of the fact that there are patronymic derivatives. In some Middle English dialects this word also denoted reeds, and the surname may in part have been originally a topographic name for someone who lived in a marshy area. The application to a church steeple is not attested before the 16th century, and is not a likely source of the surname.
- Jewish (Ashkenazic) : variant of Spiro.