Family name origins & meanings
- Partly Americanized spelling of the German occupational name Weinbrenner ‘distiller’ (literally, ‘wine burner’). The original function of the distiller, attested from the 8th century, seems to have been to extract alcohol for medicinal purposes from wine; the modern sense of someone who prepared spirituous liquor for drinking is first recorded in the 14th century.
- American bearers of this surname are descended from Johann Christian Weinbrenner, who came from the Rhineland Palatinate to Hagerstown, MD, in 1753–54.