Pinter Family History

South German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): variant of Binder ‘cooper’. Compare Pinder Hungarian (Pintér): occupational name for a maker of measures or for an official who controlled measures from an agent derivative of pint (from Old French pinte) ‘pint’. It is also common in Slovakia.

Slovenian and Croatian: variant of Pintar ‘cooper’ of Bavarian origin (compare 1 above). In North America this surname may also be a shortened form of patronymics Pinterič (Slovenian) and Pinterić (Croatian).

English: perhaps a variant of Pinder. Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic): from German Pint(e) ‘pint’ + German suffix -er, one of the surnames assigned almost at random by clerks to Jews in the Habsburg Empire.

Jewish (from Hungary): adoption of the name in 2 above either as a Hungarian calque of the formerly used German-based surname or because the Hungarian surname (or word) has some sounds in common with the original surname.