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It could be a phonetic attempt at someone's pronunciation of Sarah ... and that should eliminate it for a son, but if it's a surname then no doubt it's up for grabs, for either gender.

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Might be a memory of Sawyer too!

Sayre is the name of a town in northern Pennsylvania. It was named after Robert Sayre, so again back to Sayre used as a surname. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre,_Pennsylvania When I was in middle school, I wanted to creative and spelled Sara as Sayra for a little while. How is this person's Sayre pronounced? The name of the town in pronounced in one syllable, as SAYR.

Sayre is indeed an English surname, with the same complex derivation as Sayer, Sayers, and Sears. According to Reaney & Wilson's A Dictionary of English Surnames, it derives from a Norman French given name, which was perhaps a form of the Germanic name Sigiheri; or be an occupational name meaning either "sawyer", "shoemaker" "reciter", "assayer", or "silk-maker". Obviously one would have to be able to trace an ancestor back to a particular medieval person to know what the original derivation was for any particular Sayre family.

This message was edited 8/23/2006, 10:28 AM