This interesting and long-established surname is of early medieval English origin, and is a metonymic occupational name for a player on the tabo(u)r drum. The derivation is from the Middle English and Old French "tabo(u)r", perhaps ultimately from the Persian "tabir". Job-descriptive surnames, such as this, originally denoted the actual occupation of the namebearer, and later became hereditary. Early examples of the surname include: Adam Tabur (Shropshire, 1204), Peter Taburer (Norfolk, 1222), and Bernard le Taborer (Hampshire, 1280); the latter two forms are from a derivative of the Middle English "tab(e)re", to play on the tabor, or from the Old French "tabur, tabour", one who plays the tabor, a drummer.In the modern idiom the surname is variously spelt: Taber, Tabor, Tabah, Taberer, Tabborah and Tabrar. On July 10th 1575 Isbell Taber and John Fenton were married at St. Dunstan's in the East, London, and on September 25th 1612, Edward, son of Leonard Taber, was christened at St. Botolph without Aldgate, London. In March 1635, Timothy Tabor, aged 35, his wife, Jane, and their three daughters, embarked for New England from the Dorset port of Weymouth. A Coat of Arms granted to the Taber family is a silver shield with three gold griffins' heads erased on a green fess, the Crest being a griffin's head erased proper. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Suein Tabor, which was dated 1185, in the "Pipe Rolls of Wiltshire", during the reign of Henry 11, known as "The Builder of Churches", 1154 - 1189. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.