A person who hews; someone whose job is to chop or shape wood, stone, or other materials with an axe or chisel.
From 'hew' plus the agent suffix '-er' (Old English '-ere'). Historically common occupational surname (e.g., Hewer), referring to stonemasons, woodcutters, or miners who extracted materials by chopping.
Surnames like 'Hewer,' 'Cooper,' 'Miller,' and 'Fletcher' are occupational fossils—they preserve the medieval economy in people's family names, telling us which jobs were common and important enough to define entire families.
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