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  Webber Coat of Arms / Webber Family CrestThe surname of WEBBER was an occupational name 'the webster' a weaver. The name was originally derived from the Old English word WEBBA. Early records of the name mention Alger se Webba listed in Devon records between 1100 and 1130. Robert de Webber 1273 County Cornwall. Matthew Webber of County Cornwall, registered at Oxford University in 1524. Buried Freze Weber (a poor woman) at St. James's, Clerkenwell, London in 1603. Many of the modern family names throughout Europe reflect the profession or occupation of their forbears in the Middle Ages and derive from the position held by their ancestors in the village, noble household or religious community in which they lived and worked. The addition of their profession to their birth name made it easier to identify individual tradesmen and craftsmen. As generations passed and families moved around, so the original identifying names developed into the corrupted but simpler versions that we recognise today. Notable members of the name include Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (1786-1826) the German composer and pianist, born of a noble but impoverished Austrian family. He composed romantic operas such as 'Der Freischutz' and 'Oberon'. Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1804-91) was the German physicist; he devised the system of measurement of electrical quantities. Over the centuries, most people in Europe have accepted their surname as a fact of life, as irrevocable as an act of God, however much the individual may have liked or disliked the surname, they were stuck with it, and people rarely changed them by personal choice. A more common form of variation was in fact involuntary, when an official change was made, in other words, a clerical error. Among the humbler classes of European society, and especially among illiterate people, individuals were willing to accept the mistakes of officials, clerks and priests as officially bestowing a new version of their surname, just as they had meekly accepted the surname they had been born with. In North America, the linguistic problems confronting immigration officials at Ellis Island in the 19th century were legendary as a prolific source of Anglicization. The name is also spelt Weber. |
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