This is a Dutch surname. Recorded in the spellings of De Vaar and Vaar, it originates from a place called Vaar or Vaart in the province of Zuid Holland, The Netherlands, or describes a person who lived by a dyke or channel. The word 'vaar' means 'waterway or channel', but it is possible that the name was also job descriptive for one who worked on a waterway, or may even have been a builder of dykes and waterways. In Dutch the preposition 'de' usually means 'the', but when associated with land or property can have the French meaning of 'from'. Ceratinly locational surnames are by their very nature 'from' names, and as such were usually given to people after they left their former homesteads and moved elsewhere. Dutch locational surnames are often specific in this respect, and as the recordings show, and it seems from the recordings that nameholders people who lived at or near Vaar were known as Vaar, but if they moved away they became De Vaar. Examples taken from early church register recordings of the 18th century include:Arent Vaar, whose daughter Stijntje was born at Rochangel, Zuid Holland, on September 23rd 1710, whilst Stijntje herself married Cornelius Jongejan at Rochangle on August 16th 1733. The name recordings then show a gap to Willem de Vaar, who was a witness at Werewarden, Gelderland, on May 26th 1796, and later still Mattheus de Vaar who married Johannis Nijhuisjs also at Werewarden on December 13th 1837.

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