Kerr
/kɛr/noun
A Scottish surname and a Scots word referring to marshy, brush-covered ground or a thicket.
Did you know?The surname Kerr is strongly associated with the Scottish Borders, where the landscape’s marshes and wooded thickets helped generate local place-names and family names.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Germanic
Germanic
*kerra
“A wooded or brush-covered wetland; reconstructed ancestral form”
Viking Age
Old Norse
kjarr
“Brushwood, scrub, or marshy thicket”
Medieval Scotland
Scots
ker
“A marshy place or thicket”
13th–14th Century
Scots
Kerr
“A surname derived from a place-name or landscape feature”
Modern English
English
Kerr
“A Scottish surname; also a Scots geographical term for wet, wooded ground”