Updated June 9, 2019

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Family name origins & meanings

  • German : from Middle High German brust ‘chest’, ‘breast’; also ‘vest’, presumably a nickname for someone with a particularly broad chest or alternatively for the wearer of a distinctive upper garment.
  • Swiss German : topographic name for someone living near a down-fault in a mountain range, probably a crevasse, from Brust, a noun derivative of bresten ‘to burst’.
  • French : from Old French brost ‘shoot’, ‘young growth’. Morlet suggests this is a topographic name for someone who lived by an area of low growth suitable for grazing.
  • Jewish (Ashkenazic) : presumably from German Brust ‘chest’ (see 1) or from the Yiddish equivalent, brust.