Backer
An English surname that can mean either “baker” or, in some older explanations, someone connected with a back or ferry.
The #9,615 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 91,345 Americans shares it.
Etymology
This surname is usually taken as an occupational name from Middle English bakere, meaning “baker,” with spelling variation shortening or simplifying the middle vowel. Some 19th-century writers also treated it as related to a ferry or river crossing term, giving it the sense “person in charge of a back/ferry,” but that explanation is less common and less secure. In German contexts, Backer can also reflect a cognate occupational form meaning “baker.”
History
In English records, Backer appears as one of several variant spellings around the much more common Baker. The form was noted in surname dictionaries as both an occupational name and, more rarely, as a possible topographic or administrative term connected with a ferry or “back.” In German-speaking areas, the same spelling can arise independently from the common word for baker.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some older surname books even grouped Backer with surnames like Backhouse and Baxman because of the obscure older word back, meaning a river crossing or ferry.
From the historical record
“ferry. Hence Backman and Backer. BACKER. The same as Backman. BACKHOUSE. See Bakehouse. BACKMAN. One who had the care of a back or ferry. See Back, Baxman, ILK. BACON. A> seigniory in Normandy. According to the genealogy of the great Suflblk family of Bacon, one Grimbald, a relative of the Norman chieftain William”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom