LAUREN BAKER

Apparently modelled on Laurence, this was first used, or at any rate first brought to public attention, by the film actress Lauren Bacall (b. 1924 as Betty Jean Perske), famous for her partnership with Humphrey Bogart. They appeared together in several films, notably To Have and Have Not (1943) and The Big Sleep (1946). The name was extremely popular throughout the 1990s. See also Loren.

English: occupational name, from Middle English bakere, Old English bæcere, a derivative of bacan ‘to bake’. It may have been used for someone whose special task in the kitchen of a great house or castle was the baking of bread, but since most humbler households did their own baking in the Middle Ages, it may also have referred to the owner of a communal oven used by the whole village. The right to be in charge of this and exact money or loaves in return for its use was in many parts of the country a hereditary feudal privilege. Compare Miller. Less often the surname may have been acquired by someone noted for baking particularly fine bread or by a baker of pottery or bricks.