Tooker

Recorded as Tucker and Tooker (England), and as Tucker, Tooker, Togher, Tooher, Toher (Ireland), this is a surname of three possible origins. If English it is an occupational surname for a "fuller", a cloth-softener, also known as a "walker". Tucker was the usual term in the south-west of England, Walker in the west and north y and "Fuller" in the south-east and east Anglia. The derivation is from the Olde English pre 7th Century verb "tucian", meaning "to torment", referring to the softening of the cloth by beating and tramping on it in water. A second possible origin is from a French nickname "tout-coeur" meaning all heart, and given to a brave or generous person or pehaps given the sardonic humour of the period, - the reverse. The third option is Irish where the name can be either an English settler name, or derive from the Gaelic O' Tuachair. This means the male descendant of the brave one, not dissimilar in meaning to the French version, and possibly associated in some way. There were two distinct septs, in Ulster in the North, and Munster in the south and west. From Ireland Catherine Tucker, aged 23 years, was a famine emigrant, who sailed the ship "Envoy" bound for New York, on June 4th 1846. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Baldwin Tuckere. This was dated 1236, in the records of Battle Abbey, Sussex, during the reign of King Henry 111rd of England, known as "The Frenchman", 1216 - 1272. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was sometimes known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.