Updated June 9, 2019

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Family name origins & meanings

  • German (also Käufer) and Jewish (Ashkenazic) : occupational name for a trader or shopkeeper, from Middle High German koufer, köfer, German Kaufer ‘seller’, ‘trader’. The base form kouf (from Latin caupo ‘merchant’) already had this meaning but was subsequently augmented by various suffixes: -er, -el, -man.