Explore the Family Name Fenster

The meaning of Fenster

1. German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): metonymic occupational name for a window maker, from Middle High German venster, German Fenster ‘window’. Medieval windows were often just holes in the wall; indeed, the English word window derives from Old Norse vindauga ‘wind eye’. Later they were filled with a frame containing thin layers of translucent horn, and eventually glass, normally only in small pieces leaded together. As a Jewish name, in many families it is one of the surnames randomly assigned by Austrian clerks. 2. German: possibly a habitational name from any of various minor places so named from being in a gap in a range of hills or a clearing in a wood; it may also have been a topographic name for someone who lived in a house remarkable for its windows. Some characteristic forenames: Jewish Yaacov, Chaim, Chana, Dov, Hyman.

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