Bullinger

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A family name carried by Heinrich, the sixteenth-century Swiss Protestant theologian who led the Reformation in Zurich after Zwingli
2. A surname associated with Heinrich, the Swiss reformer who succeeded Zwingli as the leader of the Protestant church in Zurich
3. The family name of a sixteenth-century Swiss theologian who guided the Reformation in Zurich following the death of Zwingli

Etymology: Two unrelated family names lie behind this word, and their histories never meet. One comes from Switzerland. In Swiss German, Bullinger was a habitational surname, the kind taken from the place where a family lived, and the word was borrowed directly from it. The other comes from medieval France. Old French "bolengier" meant "baker," and it gave rise to an occupational surname for a man who baked bread. Both surnames became the source of the same English form, so the word carries a Swiss place-name and a French trade name at once.