Family name origins & meanings
- French (Bègue) : nickname for someone afflicted with a stammer, from a derivative of Old French beguer ‘to stammer’ (from Middle Low German beggen ‘to chatter’). In the 12th century in Liège a priest called Lambert le Begue (‘Lambert the Stammerer’) founded a Christian sisterhood whose members followed an austere rule of life; they came to be known as the Béguines. A century later an order of lay brothers modeled on this sisterhood was founded in Flanders, the Beghards (see Beckert). The name is frequent in LA.