Explore the Family Name Callier

The meaning of Callier

1. French: from an Old French term denoting earthenware and, by extension, a particular type of earthenware vessel from which new wine was drunk, hence probably a metonymic occupational name for a maker of such crocks. 2. French: from caielier, an occupational name for a chair maker, from an agent derivative of caiel ‘chair’. 3. English (Staffordshire): probably a variant of the occupational name Collier ‘charcoal burner’, though in some cases perhaps a variant of Caller, from a Middle English side-form callier with substitution of the suffix -ier for -er. In Kent and Somerset, Caller is chiefly a variant of the nickname or habitational name Callow. Elsewhere it may derive either from Middle English caller ‘maker of cauls’ (baskets, nets, women’s close-fitting caps or headdresses for covering tied up hair), from Middle English calle ‘basket, net’ (Old English cawl), or from a topographic or occupational name for someone who lived by or worked at a sheep pen or pigsty (Middle English calle), synonymous with atte Calle. See Call.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.