WENDELL TAYLOR

Mainly U.S.: from the surname derived in the Middle Ages from the Continental Germanic personal name Wendel, in origin an ethnic name for a Wend, a member of the Slavic people living in the area between the Elbe and the Oder, who were overrun by Germanic migrants in the 12th century. It has been adopted as a given name as a result of the fame of the American writer Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–94) and his jurist son, also Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841–1935), members of a leading New England family.

English and Scottish: occupational name for a tailor, from Old French tailleur (Late Latin taliator, from taliare ‘to cut’). The surname is extremely common in Britain and Ireland, and its numbers have been swelled by its adoption as an Americanized form of the numerous equivalent European names, most of which are also very common among Ashkenazic Jews, for example Schneider, Szabó, and Portnov.