Where the Meyer name comes from

Meyer grew from more than one root, and in German it began as a job title. In Middle High German a meier was the manager of a lord's country estate, a word taken from the Latin maior domus, the headman of a household. Over time the word also came to mean a tenant or a free farmer, much as the English Steward did before it became the surname Stuart. It was often joined to other words to build longer German surnames such as Bachmeier, Bergmair and Niedermeier.

A separate Jewish line runs back to the Hebrew given name Me'ir, meaning "shining". Some German Jews took Meyer as a surname in the 18th century as they assimilated to German culture, because it sat close to that name. The spelling also appears as a Dutch variant of Meijer and as a Danish surname. The 2010 United States Census counted 150,895 people named Meyer, making it the 183rd most common surname in the country.