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Origin / History of the Baker Name

This ancient surname is always occupational, and is of Olde English pre 8^th Century origins deriving from the word 'boeccure', which many people take to mean 'baker'.  However, it may not always been applied to a maker of bread.  There are a number of other possible origins, and these include an official with special responsibilities for the baking ovens in a monastery or castle, as well as the keeper of the 'communal kitchen' in a town or village, since most of the humbler households had no cooking facilities other than a pot over a fire.  The right to be in charge of this service and to exact money or loaves in return for its use, was in many parts of Britain, a hereditary feudal privilege.  Less often the surname may have been acquired by someone noted for specifically baking fine bread or as an owner of a kiln for the baking of pottery or even bricks.  The surname is first recorded as a family name in the late 12^th Century, when William le Bakere, appears in the 1177 ‘Pipe Rolls of Norfolk’.   Other early recordings include such examples as Robert Bakere, a witness in the ‘Assize Court Rolls of Lancashire’ in 1246, and Walter le Backere in the ‘Rolls of Hampshire’ in 1280.  The female form of the name is 'Baxter'.  During the latter half of the 19^th Century the name was arguably the most famous in the United Kingdom.  This was owing to the exploits of Sir Samuel Baker, who with Stanley and Livingstone, was the greatest African explorer, and his brother, Valentine Baker, the famous Cavalry leader, known worldwide as 'Baker Pasha'.  

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