CARPENTER Family History
This ancient and widespread name is of early medieval English origin, and is an occupational name for a worker in wood, a "carpenter". The surname derives from the Anglo-Norman French term "carpentier", developed in England after the Conquest of 1066, and deriving from the Late Latin "carpentarius", cartwright, from "carpentum", cart, a word of Gaulish origin. This surname has the rare distinction of retaining its original spelling of the 12th Century into modern English, and is one of a select group of occupational surnames developed from essential and skilled employment during the Middle Ages; other examples are Smith, Farrar, Cartwright, Miller, Tanner, and Tiler...