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Origin / History of the Fuller Name Recorded as Fallon, Fuler, Fuller, Fullard, Fulloon, Volker, Voller, Vollers, Walker (Scotland), and probably others, this is an English medieval surname, probably introduced by the Norman French after the Conquest of England in 1066 as 'Foleur'. It is or was occupational for a cloth dresser from the word 'fullere', from the Roman (Latin) 'fullo' to smooth. The word 'full' is from the Anglo-Saxon fullian, meaning 'to whiten.' To full is to press or scour cloth in a mill. The word 'waulking' is a Scots word from the 14th century meaning the same as 'full' in English. Workers of cloth or fleece used special technique called 'fulling' and 'waulking' which first required the cloth or fleece to be shrunk, usually by soaking in stale human urine. Then Fullers Earth (a type of clay found east of London) would be pounded into the cloth until it had a smooth, tight, clean finish. The ancient seat for this type of textile work seems to have been around Norfolk. Fulling or waulking was also a hand process in Scotland, where families hand-spun and carded the wool from the sheep on their crofts, to produce the famous Harris Tweed.
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