Sandler
A surname that most often points to an ancestor who made or sold sand, or to a place-name or German/Yiddish naming pattern built on the word for sand.
The #7,272 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 67,368 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Sandler is most naturally explained from words for "sand" plus a surname-forming ending. In English it can be linked to an occupational name for someone who dealt in sand, while in German and Yiddish it may reflect a similar formation from Sand, "sand," with -ler, a common agentive or habitational suffix. Because the same form can arise in more than one language community, the surname is best treated as having several closely related explanations rather than a single fixed origin.
History
The name is found in both Anglo-German and Ashkenazi Jewish settings, which helps explain why it appears in more than one spelling tradition and in more than one migration stream. In the United States it is often associated with immigrant families from Central or Eastern Europe, especially where German or Yiddish surnames were adapted into English spelling. As with many surnames built on everyday nouns, it can have independent origins in different places.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The surname is easy to confuse with Sandler as a modern occupational-looking English name, but in many families it is actually a Central European Jewish surname that was carried into English unchanged.