Trier Family History

German and Jewish (Ashkenazic); Dutch (mainly Van Trier): habitational name from the city of Trier on the Mosel Germany named in Latin as Augusta Treverorum ‘city of Augustus among the Treveri’ a Celtic tribal name of uncertain etymology. Compare Dreyfuss.

Dutch (Van Trier): habitational name for someone from a place so called in Poppel in Antwerp province.

English: occupational name from Middle English tr(e)iour ‘assessor adjudicator examiner’ (Old French traieor treieour) sometimes ‘tax assessor’ also ‘officer in charge of a household's wine cellar accounts’.

In Old French the term often denoted a wine merchant or tapster but there is no evidence for this sense in English records.