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The sayer Surname

sayer Name Meaning and History

  1. English: from the Middle English personal name Saher or Seir. This is probably a Norman introduction of the Continental Germanic personal name Sigiheri, composed of the elements sigi ‘victory’ + heri ‘army’. However, it could also represent a Middle English survival of an unrecorded Old English name, S?here, composed of the elements s? ‘sea’ + here ‘army’.
  2. English: occupational name, from Middle English saghier (see Sawyer) or Old French seieor.
  3. English: occupational name for a professional reciter, from an agent derivative of Middle English say(en), sey(en) ‘to say’.
  4. English: from a reduced form of Middle English assayer, an agent derivative of assay ‘trial’, ‘test’, Old French essay (from Late Latin exagium, a derivative of exagminare ‘to weigh’), hence an occupational name for an assayer of metals or a taster of food.
  5. English: occupational name for a maker or seller of say, a type of cloth, from Middle English say + the agent suffix -er. See also Say.
  6. Welsh: occupational name from Welsh saer ‘carpenter’ or from saer maen ‘stonecutter’, i.e. mason.
  7. French: occupational name for a reaper or mower, from an agent derivative of Old French seer ‘to cut’ (Latin secare).
  8. Dutch: occupational name for a weaver of serge, from an agent derivative of saai ‘serge’.
  9. Dutch: occupational name from zaaier ‘sower’.

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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sayer Family Facts

Distribution of sayer Families in the US in 1920
Number of sayer families
 71-139
 24-70		 1-23
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com.au from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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Year

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The information for this map came from Ancestry.com.au’s US Federal Census Collection.
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