Master Coat of Arms and Surname Origin

Arms linked to Masters and its spellings were granted to individual families; our heraldry team traces which line they belonged to.

The meaning behind Master

Spellings drift, and Master is where Masters drifted for some families. Name scholars give the meaning as “Son of the master”.

Master drops the “s” of Masters, a simplification that clerks often made. Regional accents shaped spellings long before dictionaries fixed them. Other spellings include Maister and McMasters. In the 2010 US Census, 2,735 Americans gave Master as their last name (rank 11,502). Master sounds close to Meyster and Meister, so it can help to search both.

Get the complete Master report, with a museum-style coat of arms.