Frasier
A surname usually treated as a variant of Fraser, with a Scottish and ultimately Norman-French connection.
The #4,376 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 38,004 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Frasier is generally regarded as a spelling variant of Fraser rather than a completely separate surname. The older forms behind Fraser are usually linked either to a place-name or to a Norman-French source, and the spelling with -ier reflects later French-looking reshaping. The excerpted source also suggests that some English bearers may have been reinterpreted from a different Anglo-Saxon name, but that explanation is tentative rather than certain.
History
The spelling Frasier appears as a later variant of the better-known Fraser, especially in English-language records. In North America it has sometimes been standardized in this form even when the underlying family line was originally Fraser or a close variant. Because historical spellings were fluid, some instances may also reflect local pronunciation or clerical reshaping.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
In older records, Frasier and Frazier can blur together, since scribes often wrote names the way they sounded rather than using a fixed spelling.
From the historical record
“* Possibly another extended form may be found in Eng. Frasir, Frkezok French Frasier, Frezier. t Our name Picture (Registrar-General's return) seems rather probably to be from this origin, representing an Ang.-Sax. Pecthere or Peh there. N 2”
— The Teutonic Name-System applied to the family names of France, England and Germany