Sawyer
A common occupational surname for a person who sawed wood, also influenced by older forms with an intrusive -y-.
The #707 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 6,297 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Sawyer is an occupational surname meaning “a sawyer” or woodcutter who cuts timber with a saw. The name goes back to Old English saga, meaning “saw,” with related Germanic forms in Old Norse and Middle English. Some older scholarship also treats the -y- as an intrusive spelling element, so Sawyer can be understood as a later form of earlier Sawer/Saweer-type spellings.
History
The surname appears in medieval and early modern records as a craft name, and it remained common wherever woodcutting and timber work were important. Historical surname writers also noted a northern English use of the word itself, which helped support its survival as both a vocabulary term and a family name. The spelling Sawyer became standard in English, especially in Britain and North America.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Nineteenth-century surname scholars explicitly compared Sawyer with other craft names that picked up an extra -y-, like Bowyer and Lawyer.
From the historical record
“Abbey, p. GO. SAWYER. SAWYERS. The occupa- tion. SAX. A-Sax. seax or sex, a dagger or short sword. SAXBY. Parishes In cos. Lincoln and Leicester. SAXELBY. Parishes In cos. Lincoln and Leicester.”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom