Family name origins & meanings
- English : from an agent derivative of Middle English wasch(en) ‘to wash’ (Old English wæscan), hence an occupational name for a laundryman, or for someone who washed raw wool before spinning. Various other occupations, too, involved washing processes and the name may relate to any of these. For example, it may have denoted a man who washed sheep; some tenants on the manor of Burpham, near Worthing, in Sussex (where the surname is found from an early date), had as part of their feudal service to wash the flocks of their master.
- Americanized spelling of the German cognate Wascher.