Fenster Family History

German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): metonymic occupational name for a window maker from Middle High German venster German Fenster ‘window’. Medieval windows were often just holes in the wall; indeed the English word window derives from Old Norse vindauga ‘wind eye’. Later they were filled with a frame containing thin layers of translucent horn and eventually glass normally only in small pieces leaded together.

As a Jewish name in many families it is one of the surnames randomly assigned by Austrian clerks. German: possibly a habitational name from any of various minor places so named from being in a gap in a range of hills or a clearing in a wood; it may also have been a topographic name for someone who lived in a house remarkable for its windows.