Farmer
An occupational surname for a farm worker, tenant, or husbandman.
The #480 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 4,435 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Farmer comes from the Middle English word for someone who farms land, ultimately tied to Old French and late medieval land-holding vocabulary. In its earliest surname use, it could refer broadly to a tenant, leaseholder, or agricultural worker rather than the modern business sense of a large-scale commercial farmer. The name is therefore a straightforward occupational surname: it began as a label for a person connected with farming or land tenure.
History
The occupational byname appears in medieval English records and later became a fixed hereditary surname. Historical surname writers also note that the modern sense of "farmer" developed relatively late, so early bearers of the name were not necessarily what we would now call farmers. The surname is common in England and later spread widely to North America and other English-speaking regions.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some older surname writers remarked that the modern word "farmer" came into ordinary use later than surnames did, which is why the name can be older than the everyday sense people now attach to it.
From the historical record
“Macbain enlarges upon the common custom in Scotland of calling a farmer or laird by the name of his farm or estate. "Thus, we speak of Netherton, Ballintomb, &c., when we mean the tenant or pro- prietor. The abuse of this style of speech and writing was carried so far that farmers often signed their letters and…”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)Notable people named Farmer
- Philip José Farmer (1918–2009)
Sourced from Wikidata; linked to their Wikipedia page.