Waeir 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 1184. 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 ).