Recorded in a wide variety of spellings including Kop, Kopp, Koppe, Koppke, Koppeck, Koppen, Kopf, Kopfen, Kopfer, and Kopmann (Ashkenasic, German and Dutch), Kopec (Polish) and Kopta (Czech), and many others, this is an early European surname. It essentially means the same in all languages which is 'the head or top'. However the interpretation is quite different in the different countries, with in German the origination usually being a nickname probably for a person with a bald head, or secondly occupational for a maker of cups or flasks. These vessels, particularly when upside down look like bald heads. In Poland the name may be locational for a person who lives on a hill, or in the case of the spelling as Kopczynski, describes a land owner, or one who owns the land on which the hill stands. In both Poland and the Czech repulbic there is a secondary meaning of chimney sweep, a person who in order to perform his job, literally climbed to 'the top'. Early examples of German surname recordings taken from the relative surviving citizens lists of the town and cities as follows include: Bertholdus Koppo of Augsburg in the year 1221, Henrich Kopf of Ravensburg in 1321, and Elewardus Copman of Hamburg in 1485.

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