Westerman
An English surname meaning “western man,” originally used for someone from the west or who had come from the western side.
The #6,620 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 60,337 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Westerman comes from Old English elements meaning “west” and “man,” so its literal sense is “western man.” It was likely first used as a descriptive byname for someone who lived to the west of a settlement or who had moved in from the west. The name belongs to the same broad class as West, Western, and related directional surnames.
History
19th-century surname writers treated Westerman as an English directional surname and compared it with related forms such as West and Western. The name is also found in Germanic surname traditions, which can make it hard in some families to know whether the ancestry is English or continental without local records. In the US it is established but not especially common.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Direction-based surnames like Westerman often began as plain topographic labels, not as family names in the modern sense.
From the historical record
“dence, estate] WESTERMAN (Eng.) Western Man [O.E. westerne -t- mann] WESTERN (Eng.) Westerner [O.E. Kirater/i^, western] Westerton 276”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)