Explore the Family Name Stopper

The meaning of Stopper

1. English: perhaps a nickname for someone with a heavy stride or an awkward way of walking, from a conjectural Middle English word stauper, stouper or, with substitution of the pejorative suffix -ard, Middle English staupard, stoupard. 2. English: perhaps an occupational name for a maker of stoups, from Middle English staupe, stoupe, stope (Old Norse staup, reinforced by Middle Dutch stoop), ‘jug, often made of leather; measure for liquids; vessel or container for holy water’. Alternatively, the name may derive from an unrecorded Middle English stopper, perhaps ‘maker of pails, buckets, or jugs’, a derivative of Middle English stoppe (Old English stoppa). 3. English: variant of Stopford, a habitational name from Stockport (Cheshire), from Old English stoc ‘place, secondary settlement’ + port ‘town, market’. 4. German: occupational name from an agent derivative of Middle High German stoppen ‘to repair’. 5. Germanized form of Sorbian Stopjera and Stopora: from Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian vernacular forms of the Greek personal name Christophoros (see Christopher). 6. Germanized form of Slovenian Stopar. Some characteristic forenames: German Matthias.

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