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The surname TASKER is an old 'occupational' name for someone who did tasks. The main task seems to have been reaping the grain at harvest time, but obviously Taskers did other tasks too during the farming year. According to the Dictionary of American Family Names, TASKER comes from the Anglo-Norman French tasque meaning ‘task’ (Old French tasche, Late Latin taxa, of uncertain origin). Another theory has TASKER coming from the Middle English taske from the Latin taxare meaning 'to appraise'. So it came to be used as a surname to denote an appraiser, and later it came to mean one who performed a specific task, like threshing or reaping. The whole idea of surnames only really started in the period from about AD1000 onwards, as up to then people were happy with just one name. The earliest parish registers in England start from the 1530s, recording christenings, marriages, and burials. And there are records of Taskers before 1550 in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, Sussex, Gloucestershire, Hereford and Devon. Even earlier than this are the Poll Tax records of 1377, 1379 and 1381, which also include Taskers from several parts of England. So Taskers have been around for a long time - and there must have been many dozens of Taskers all over England, none of them related to each other by blood. But all Taskers everywhere share a common background, as all our ancestors, at some point, were agricultural labourers, working on land that belonged to someone else. We were the first subcontractors, the first hired hands, maybe even the first consultants...! Click below for more Tasker origin information by date, by English counties, or by countries. Or click the top links for news about Taskers, links to other Tasker websites, or the Homepage.
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