Clapper Family History

English (Yorkshire): topographic name from Middle English claper generally denoting someone who lived by a rabbit warren. In southern counties however it often denoted a clapper bridge, a rough or natural bridge across a stream.

The Devon clapper bridge, common on Dartmoor, was made of flat stones laid across stone pillars. Alternatively, a nickname for a chatterer from Middle English claper ‘the tongue of a bell or of a noisy person’.

Americanized form of German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) Klapper ‘chatterer’.