Caesar Family History

English African American West Indian Guyanese and African (mainly Ghana): from a personal name or nickname based on the Roman surname of Gaius Julius Caesar (100–44 BC) Roman general and father (by adoption) of Augustus the first Roman Emperor. It was associated by folk etymology in classical times with Latin caesaries ‘head of hair’ but is probably of Etruscan origin.

After the spectacular success of Julius Caesar the name was adopted by his imperial successors and eventually came to be taken as a generic title. It gave rise to vocabulary words meaning ‘emperor’ or ‘ruler’ in German (Kaiser) Russian (tsar) Czech (císař) Slovak (cisár) Slovenian (cesar) Hungarian (császár) Arabic (qayṣar) and other languages.

As an English surname it is derived from the name Cesar, rare in Middle English but found occasionally both as a personal name and as a surname. In North America it can also be an Americanized form of cognates from other languages, for example Italian Cesare, Czech Císař, Hungarian Császár, Slovenian Cesar and Časar.

German: humanistic name re-translation into Latin of German Kaiser.