English: from Middle English biscop, Old English
bisc(e)op ‘bishop’, which comes via Latin from Greek
episkopos ‘overseer’. The Greek word was adopted early in the
Christian era as a title for an overseer of a local community of
Christians, and has yielded cognates in every European language:
French évêque, Italian vescovo, Spanish
obispo, Russian yepiskop, German Bischof,
etc. The English surname has probably absorbed at least some of these
continental European cognates. The word came to be applied as a
surname for a variety of reasons, among them service in the household
of a bishop, supposed resemblance in bearing or appearance to a
bishop, and selection as the ‘boy bishop’ on St. Nicholas’s Day.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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