Cater
An occupational surname for a caterer or provision buyer, from medieval French and English.
The #8,419 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 78,641 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Cater comes from Middle English acatour or cater, a term for someone who bought or supplied provisions for a household or court. The word goes back to Anglo-Norman and Old French achatour, related to achat, meaning a purchase. In later English usage, it came to mean a caterer or purveyor.
History
Historical dictionaries note Cater, Cator, and Caterer as related forms. The surname appears in medieval records and later survived in several spelling variants, especially in England. Some early spellings were influenced by changing French and English pronunciation and by scribal variation.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The same root is behind the word "cater" in the modern sense of providing food or service for an event.
From the historical record
“riff's under bailiffs. This last form of the name seems to have become extinct. CATER. CATOR. Formerly acater, a caterer or purveyor, llalliw. Le Catour, Le Catur. H.R. The place allotted to the keeping of provisions purchased for the court was called the acatry, and the pur- chaser himself bore the name of the…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom