Occupational surnames: why is "Taylor" the only one that's spelled "wrong"?

Cooper
Glover
Grover
Sharp
Many names like this.

The livery company in the City of London is still called the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors.

How are those spelled differently than the occupations they represent? What do they represent?

Oh, I wasn’t thinking about the spelling. Sorry.

How about shepherd? As a surname, you see it spelled Shepard, Sheppard, Shephard and Shepperd (and less commonly Shepeard, Shepheard, and Shippard).

Eisenhower the iron cutter and Stalin (steelman) fought the Paperhanger.

If we’re going by name meanings, “Hitler” means somebody who lives near a fountain or underground stream.

And Stalin was a pseudonym. His actual name means Jughashvili, which means either child of somebody from the town of Jugaani or child of a shepherd, depending on whether it’s a Georgian or Ossetian name.

Confusingly, “tailor” also means bell strokes (tolling). Cf. The Nine Tailors.

I don’t know if it’s authoritative but this webpage gives some examples of changed-spelling occupations:
Coward < cow-herd
Stoddard < stot-herd
Yateman < gatekeeper
Warner < rabbit warriner

Cooper (barrel maker) was originally spelled couper or cowper.

Glover (glove-maker) does not seem to differ from its original spelling.

Grover (dweller in a grove) and Sharp (keen, smart) neither represent occupations nor have changed in spelling (although Sharp is also spelled Sharpe).

Other somewhat tangential occupational-name questions:

Why do you see people named Shoemaker but never anyone named Cobbler?

Everyone with the last name “Knight” can’t literally have been actual knights, because you can’t just be born as a knight, you have to earn that title, so who was the first to adopt that name? Some poser?

Are these kind of names common in non-European cultures?

What is the MOST RECENT occupation to have people named after it?

Engineer, maybe. There are a bunch of Indian surnames that are English occupations. They’re artefacts of a law that people had to have surnames - many simply adopted their profession’s English language name.

Farokh Engineer, for example.

Here’s a few more…

Ardeshir Reporter

Nari Contractor

Gary Lawyer

One has more prestige as an occupation, no doubt - shoemakers made shoes, cobblers just fixed them.

See also the surname “Cordwainer”

Although I was under the impression a lot of people with the surname “Shoemaker” in America were originally “Schumacher” or similar, and German/Yiddish might not have had the distinction.

What’s the “right” spelling for these? All seem to be regular spellings.

I’m pretty sure I saw tailor shops in the UK with signs spelling it “taylor”.

It’s an analogue of the German word Knecht, which means servant or soldier.

You’re not born a tailor or a cobbler, either. And while there were places where you could be born the equivalent of a knight (as that had become an inheritable title), a duke or even a king, often the equivalent lastnames refer to people who were part of their households.

This guy, Phillip Sherman, is my 8-th great grandfather, and if you look at his signature on the Portsmouth Compact, he spells it “Shearman” which tells you about the ancestral occupation.

He’s got about a bazillion descendants, including the Bushes of presidential fame, so I’m not giving anything away about myself. :slight_smile:

And anyway it’s more badass to be named after a mace.