Family name origins & meanings
- English : occupational name for a herdsman who had charge of rams, from an agent derivative of Middle English to(u)pe ‘ram’ (of uncertain origin).
- German (Tüpper) : occupational name for a potter, from Middle Low German duppe, Rhenish düppen ‘pot’. This is predominantly a Rhineland surname.
- This is the name of a family descended from two brothers, originally from Kassel, Germany. They fled religious persecution in the 16th century, settling in the Netherlands, where a descendant became burgomaster of Rotterdam in 1813. A branch of the family settled in England at Sandwich, Kent, whence another descendant, Thomas Tupper, went to America in 1635, and helped to found Sandwich, MA, in 1637. Benjamin Tupper, born in Stoughton, MA, in 1738 was a colonial legislator and explorer of OH.