Singer Family History

Jewish (Ashkenazic): occupational name for a cantor in a synagogue from Yiddish zinger ‘singer’. English and Scottish (Aberdeenshire): occupational name from Middle English singer(e) ‘singer, cantor, reciter of verse, player of a musical instrument’. See also Sing, Sanger.

English: perhaps from an unrecorded Anglo-Norman French and Middle English personal name Sinegar, an Old French borrowing of ancient Germanic Sineger (from an augmentative prefix + gēr ‘spear’).

German: variant of Sänger (see Sanger) in the sense of ‘poet’. American shortened form of German Reisinger.

Native American (Navajo): translation into English (and shortening) of a Navajo personal name based on the occupational name hataałii ‘singer (i.e. medicine man)’ such as Hataałii Yázhí ‘Little Singer’; see Hatathlie.