Tanner Family History

English (southern) and Dutch: occupational name for a tanner of skins. Middle English tanner Middle Dutch taenre. The Middle English form derives from Old English tannere from Late Latin tannarius reinforced by Old French taneor from Late Latin tannator; both Late Latin forms derive from a verb tannare possibly from a Celtic word for the oak whose bark was used in the process.

German: topographic name from Middle High German tan ‘woods, pine forest’ for someone who lived near such terrain. German: habitational name for someone from any of several places called Tanne (in the Harz Mountains, Bavaria, East Prussia, Switzerland) or Tann (Hesse, Bavaria), Thann (Bavaria, Austria, Alsace), Tannen (southern Germany, Switzerland), Thannen (Bavaria).

Finnish: ornamental name from tanner ‘open field’. Adopted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries name-changing campaigns mainly in southern and southwestern Finland to replace Finnish and Swedish surnames (compare Laine).