Towner
An English surname probably referring to someone from a town, or more specifically a town worker, farmhand, or town-herdsman.
The #8,626 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 80,972 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname is usually explained from Old English and Middle English town-related words: either from "town" in the sense of a homestead or settlement, plus the agent suffix "-er," or from an older occupational sense of a town worker or farm labourer. Some 19th-century writers also linked it with forms like "town-herd," meaning a keeper or guardian of a town herd or farm stock. In short, the name likely began as a rural occupational byname rather than a reference to a modern city dweller.
History
Early surname writers treated Towner as a fairly transparent English occupational name and compared it with Townsend and Townman. It appears in English records by the early modern period and was noted by Bardsley as occurring in places such as Eastbourne, Sussex. The name later spread to the United States, where it remains uncommon.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
A Cornwall note in older scholarship says a farmyard was still called a "town-place," which helps explain why a surname like Towner could sound rural rather than urban.
From the historical record
“Cp. Townsend. TOWNER (Eng.) =Town (q.v.) -f the agent, suff. -er. TOWN H ER D 1 (Eng.) Town - HERDSMAN or TOWNERD \ Farm-Bailiff [v.underTown, and -I- M.E. herd{e, O.E. hierde, guardian, keeper, etc.] Augustin Tuuherd.— i/wwrf. Rolls.”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)