Privy Purse
Expenses of that careful monarch Henry VII. occurs the item--

"To bere drunken at a fermors house . . . 1s."

In the same way we replace the Fr. -our, -eur by -er, as in Turner,
Fr. tourneur, Ginner, Jenner for Jenoure.

The ending -er, -ier represents the Lat. -arius. It passed not only
into French, but also into the Germanic languages, replacing the
Teutonic agential suffix which consisted of a single vowel. We have a
few traces of this oldest group of occupative names, e.g. Webb, Mid.
Eng. webbe, Anglo-Sax. webb-a, and Hunt, Mid. Eng. hunte, Anglo-Sax.
hunt-a--

"With hunte and horne and houndes hym bisyde"

(A, 1678)--

which still hold the field easily against Webber and Hunter.

So also, the German name Beck represents Old High Ger. pecch-o, baker.
To these must be added Kemp, a champion, a very early loan-word
connected with Lat. campus, field, and Wright, originally the worker,
Anglo-Sax. wyrht-a. Camp is sometimes for Kemp, but is also from the
Picard form of Fr, champ, i.e. Field. Of similar formation to Webb,
etc., is Clapp, from an Anglo-Sax. nickname, the clapper--

"Osgod Clapa, King Edward Confessor's staller, was cast upon the
pavement of the Church by a demon's hand for his insolent pride in
presence of the relics (of St. Edmund, King and Martyr)."

(W. H. Hutton, Bampton Lectures, 1903.)

NAMES IN -STER

The ending -ster was originally feminine, and applied to trades
chiefly carried on by women, e.g. Baxter, Bagster, baker, Brewster,
Simister, sempster, Webster, etc., but in process of time the
distinction was lost, so that we find Blaxter and Whitster for
Blacker, Blakey, and Whiter, both of which, curiously enough, have the
same meaning--

"Bleykester or whytster, candidarius" (Prompt. Parv.)--

for this black represents Mid. Eng. bla-c, related to bleak and
bleach, and meaning pale--

"Blake, wan of colour, blesme (bleme)" (Palsgrave).

Occupative names of French origin are apt to vary according to the
period and dialect of their adoption. For Butcher we find also
Booker, Bowker, and sometimes the later Bosher, Busher, with the same
sound for the ch as in Labouchere, the lady butcher. But Booker may
also mean what it appears to mean, as Mid. Eng. bokere is used by
Wyclif for the Latin scriba.

Butcher, originally a dealer in goat's flesh, Fr. bouc, has ousted
flesher. German still has half a dozen surnames derived from names
for this trade, e.g. Fleisc