Boyer is a French surname. In rarer cases, it can be a corruption or deliberate alteration of other names.
Repartition and etymology
Boyer [bwaje] is a personal name from France, found traditionally along the Mediterranean sea (Provence, Languedoc), the Rhône valley, Auvergne, Limousin, Périgord and more generally in the Southwest of France. Nevertheless, it has been existing further north since a long time. There are two variant spellings centered precisely : Boyé (southwest) and Bouyer (Loire-Atlantique, Charente-Maritime).
It ranks 50th out of the most common surnames in France and 265 in Québec.
Like many other surnames, it used to be a nickname describing somebody's job in that case : "bullock driver", "cowherd", that is to say Bouvier in common French. It derives mainly from the Occitan buòu « ox », with the suffix -iar / -ier, frenchified phonetically or, further north, sometimes from a variant form in dialectal French bô, bou "ox" corresponding to common French bœuf with the suffix -ier. In French, the modern spelling -oyer [waje] avoids the confusion between -oi-er [wa'e] and -oier [waje].
In rarer cases, it can be a corruption or deliberate alteration of several other names :
- In England, may come from bowyer, meaning "bow maker" or "bow seller."
- In Turkish, the name may come from "boy-er", "boy" meaning "size" or "stature" and "er" meaning "man" or "soldier."
- It can also be a corruption or deliberate alteration of several German names like Bayer or Bauer.
Abel Boyer (1667–1729), French-English lexicographer and journalist
Alexis de Boyer (1757–1833), French surgeon
Angélique Boyer (born 1988), French-Mexican actress
Bill Boyer Jr., entrepreneurial former baggage handler who now owns Mokulele Airlines
Carl Benjamin Boyer, historian of mathematics
Charles Boyer, French-American actor
Claudette Boyer (1938–2013), Canadian politician
Clete Boyer (1937–2007), American baseball player
Edie Boyer (born 1966), American discus thrower
Elizabeth H. Boyer, American fantasy author
Elizabeth M. Boyer (1913–2002), American lawyer, feminist founder of Women's Equity Action League (WEAL), and writer
Erica Boyer (born 1956), American actress
Ernest L. Boyer, American educator
Glenn Boyer (1924–2013), American writer
Herbert Boyer (born 1936), biochemist
India Boyer (1907-1998), American architect
Jacques Boyer (born 1955) American cyclist
Jacqueline Boyer (born 1941), French singer
Jean Boyer (director), French director and author
Jean Boyer (politician), French politician
Jean-Pierre Boyer, Haitian President (1821–1843) and emancipator of slaves in Santo Domingo
Joseph Boyer (1848–1930), a Canadian-American inventor and computer industrialist,
Katy Boyer, American actress
Ken Boyer, (1931–1982) American baseball player
Louis Boyer, French astronomer
Lucienne Boyer, French singer
Max Boyer (born 1984), Canadian professional wrestler
Michael Boyer (born 1960), American actor and showman
Miguel Boyer (born 1939), Spanish politician
Nikki Boyer (born 1975), American actress and singer-songwriter
Pascal Boyer, anthropologist
Patrick Boyer (born 1945), Canadian politician
Paul D. Boyer (born 1918), American biochemist
Phil Boyer (born 1949) English footballer
Richard Boyer (disambiguation)
Rick Boyer, (born 1943) Edgar award-winning mystery writer
Richard O. Boyer (1903–1973), American journalist
Robert Stephen Boyer, a professor of computer science, mathematics, and philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin
Robert Hamilton Boyer, a 33-year-old visiting professor shot and killed in Charles Whitman's shooting spree at The University of Texas at Austin in 1966
Robert Boyer (artist), a Canadian artist of aboriginal heritage
William Boyer (born 1972), American actor
