Plummer
An occupational surname for a plumber or lead-worker, with spelling shaped by older French and English forms.
The #1,382 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 12,062 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Plummer is an occupational surname meaning a plumber or lead-worker. The underlying word goes back to Latin plumbum, “lead,” passed through Anglo-Norman/French forms such as plomber or plumier. Older spellings often varied, and related forms like Plomer, Plimmer, and Plumb(er) were treated as variants or corruptions of the same occupational name.
History
The surname is well attested in medieval English records and appears in many spelling variants over time. Bardsley and Lower both treat Plummer as the common form of a name for someone who worked with lead, especially a plumber in the older sense of a lead worker rather than only a modern pipe-fitter. The surname has remained common in England and later spread widely to the United States and other English-speaking countries.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
In medieval and early modern English, a “plumber” was especially a worker with lead, since pipes and fittings were often made of that metal.
From the historical record
“PLUMER 1 (A.-Fr.-Lat.) i Feather-Dress- PLUMMER fER [Fr. plumier; if. plume, a feather, plume, Lat. pluma] 2 Plumber [Fr. plomUer ; f. plonib, Lat. p'lumb-um, leadj (Eng.)--= Plum(m (Eng.), q.v. + the agent, suff. -et: John le piumer.— ijTaMrf. Rolls.”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)