Family name origins & meanings
- English and Scottish : from an agent derivative of Middle English stor ‘provisions’, ‘supplies’, hence an occupational name for an official in charge of dispensing provisions in a great house or monastery, or who collected rents paid in kind. The word stor was also used in the Middle Ages for livestock, and the surname may sometimes have denoted a keeper of animals.
- South German : from a Bavarian dialect word, storer, denoting an unskilled workman, i.e. someone who was not a member of a craft guild.