Family name origins & meanings
- Italian : nickname from papa ‘father’, ‘priest’, ‘pope’. In southern Italy it is generally a nickname for someone thought to resemble a priest, or in some cases for the illegitimate child of a priest, but in the North it is more often a nickname meaning ‘pope’, denoting a vain or pompous man. In Calabria it also means ‘uncle’.
- Greek : shortened form of any of various names beginning with papas ‘priest’, for example Papageorgiou ‘priest George’. Compare Papas. In the Eastern Church priests are allowed to marry and have children.
- French : from a dialect variant of French Pape.
- Dutch : variant of Pappert.
- Hungarian : probably from the old secular personal name Pápa, but in some cases possibly a habitational name from a place called Pápa in Veszprém county, or some other place similarly named.