Recorded as Yair, Yare, Yarr, Yeare, Yares and Yarmouth, this is an English surname. It originates from a pre 7th century word "gear" meaning a bar or more likely a fish trap, since the surname is believed to have originated in the county of Norfolk and also to be associated with the town of Yarmouth. Locational and topographical surnames by their nature are often "from" names. That is to say names given to people either because they lived at a particularly identifiable spot, or because they had left and moved somewhere else. The easiest way to identify a stranger being to call him or sometimes her, by the name of the place from whence they came, made for a simple development of surnames. In this case early examples of the surname recordings taken from surviving church registers of the diocese of Greater London include such examples: as Thomas Yere, christened at the church of St Mary Aldermary, in the city of London, on April 11th 1582, Lidia Yarmouth, who married Joseph Brickwood at St Dunstans in the East, Stepney, on July 8th 1632, and George Yair, whose daughter Mary, was christened at St Margarets, Westminster, on November 11th 1684.

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