Slaughter
Usually an English surname from the Gloucestershire place-name Slaughter, though some older writers also linked it to an occupational meaning like “slaughterer” or “butcher.”
The #1,295 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 11,370 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The strongest traditional explanation is locational: the surname comes from the villages of Upper and Lower Slaughter in Gloucestershire. Those place-names are usually traced to Old English elements meaning a muddy or miry place, not to the modern word "slaughter." Some 19th-century surname writers also proposed an occupational sense from an older word for a slaughterer or butcher, but that is usually treated as a secondary or less likely explanation for the family name.
History
The Gloucestershire place-name explanation appears in multiple old surname dictionaries and fits the documented medieval spellings of the place. The surname is found in English records by the Middle Ages and later spread more widely through ordinary migration, especially into other parts of Britain and then North America. Older reference works sometimes mixed this surname up with occupational forms or with the unrelated word meaning killing, so the etymology has to be handled carefully.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Despite the grim modern spelling, the famous Gloucestershire villages of Upper and Lower Slaughter are generally thought to have names connected with a muddy stream or marshy ground, not with violence.
From the historical record
“SLAUGHTER (Eng.) i for Slaughterer; Butcher [f. M.E. slaught, O.E. sleaht, slaughter] Cp. Ger. schldchter, 'slaughterer'. 2 Bel. to Slaughter (Glouc), 14th cent. Sloghtre, 13th cent. Sloutre = the Sloe- Tree [O.E. sld(k,s\oe + triow (M.E. tre), tree]”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)