Weir Family History

Scottish and English: topographic name for someone who lived by a dam or weir on a river from Middle English Older Scots wer(e) ‘weir; fish-trap’. Compare Ware and Wear. In northern England and lowland Scotland there has been much confusion with the Irish and Scottish Gaelic names in 2 4 and 5 below.

Scottish: in Scotland this surname was sometimes used for Gaelic Mac an Mhaoir ‘son of the steward’ more often Anglicized as McNair. Scottish (of Norman origin): surname of a family of Blackwood (Lanarkshire) which is said to be descended from Ralph de Ver a Norman baron associated with William the Lion between 1174 and 118. The change in pronunciation from Vere to Were would be unusual in Anglo-Norman French and the true source of the surname may lie elsewhere.

One possibility is Wierre in Pas-de-Calais. Another possibility is that the surname may represent versions of the Norman surname de la Were ‘of the war’, a nickname for a warrior; see Warr.

Irish: shortened Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac an Mhaoir ‘son of the steward’ (see McNair). This surname was formerly Anglicized as McMoyer, whence Moyers. In Scotland it more often became McNair.

Irish: Anglicized form based on an erroneous translation (as if from Gaelic cora ‘weir; stepping stones’) of various Gaelic names such as Ó Corra and Ó Comhraidhe (see Corr and Curry).