Family name origins & meanings
- English : occupational name for a dyer, Middle English litster, an agent derivative (originally feminine; compare Baxter) of lit(t)e(n) ‘to dye’ (Old Norse lita). This term was used principally in East Anglia and northern and eastern England (areas of Scandinavian settlement), and to this day the surname is found principally in these regions, especially in Yorkshire.
- Scottish : Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac an Fhleisdeir ‘son of the arrow maker’.