Cropper
An English occupational surname for someone who cut crops or worked as a mower or field laborer.
The #8,920 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 84,150 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Cropper is generally explained as an occupational name from Middle English cropper, meaning a reaper, mower, or field laborer. The word is related to the idea of cropping or cutting crops, and some older scholarship also connects it with a related Germanic base meaning a hump or crop, though the surname sense is usually taken as job-based. In this form, it belongs to the large class of English surnames formed from everyday work terms.
History
The name is recorded in English surname collections as an occupational byname, and it appears in the same broad family as other labor surnames such as Crofter and similar forms. In modern usage it is relatively uncommon, but it has persisted in Britain and the United States. Some historical writers also noted variant spellings such as Crapper, though that form can have its own separate history in some cases.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some 19th-century surname books linked Cropper with the Old Norse form Kroppr, showing how easily different etymologies could get blended in older reference works.
From the historical record
“Craft— Local, 'at the croft,' northern form of Croft, q.v. ; c Crapper for Cropper, Cracreft ■pper dMea”
— A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, with special American instances