The Shield is: Gules, three bars argent, overall a chevron azure in
base a mullet of six points or.
The Crest is: Issuing from a crown or, three ostrich plumes, one gules
between two argent, that in the middle charged with the mullet of the arms.
Origin: Germany
I created this coat of arms myself from a hand drawning from the book "Rolland, V.& H.V. Illustrations to the Armorial General" by J.-B. Riestap when I visited the Library of Congress in D.C.
Variant spellings for Bober: Bobers, Böbers, Bobert, and Bobard.
Thanks to my 2nd cousin Paul Bumber, we might have found out the mystery of where the Bumber name came from. Occording to an old church record in his possession, our great great grandfather Peter Bumber's name was spelled 'Piotr Bober'. When I wrote author William Hoffman about the name Bober, this is what he wrote.
"Bober is a pretty common name, borne by 7,641 Poles as of 1990, living in large numbers all over the country, with no significant concentration in any one part. It comes from the noun _b�br_, which means "beaver." So this name could start as a sort of nickname for one people somehow associated with beavers -- perhaps an ancestor trapped beavers or sold their pelts or somehow looked or reminded folks of a beaver.
As a rule I wouldn't expect Bober and Bumber to be confused, but with names, anything goes."
Bob[e]r- {animal} < b�br, "beaver", also a root in many place names; Bober (7641), Boberek (333), Boberski (258), Bobrek (360), Bobro (164), Bobrowicz (883), Bobrowski (5874), Bobruk (323), Bobryk (886), Bobrzyk (304), Bobrzynski (145).
Note: Numbers in parentheses show how many Polish citizens bore that particular surname as of 1990, according to the Slownik nazwisk wsp�lczrsnie w Polsce uzywanych.
Here's also some information I got from The Historical Research Center.
The Austrian Family name Bober is classified as being of personal name origin. The family name Bober indicates "son of Bober", a variant of the Old High German first name Bodobert, which is, in turn, composed of "boto", meaning "to command" and "beraht", meaning "bright, famous". It is also possible that this name is of nickname origin, derived from the Wendish word "bobr, bebr", meaning "beaver", denoting "one thought to be as industrious and hard working as a beaver".
One of the earliest references to this name or to a variant is a record of one Heinrich Bobard, a citizen of Hemeln near Hannover, who is listed in documents from 1461. Joannes Bober, son of Gregorius Bober and Catharina Kortyna, was born is Besko Rzeszowskiego, in the former Austrian province of Galicia, on April 6, 1814 and Wojciech Bober and Katarzyne Barton were married in Blazowa, also in the province of Galicia, on October 21, 1862.
Source: Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings
William F. "Fred" Hoffman
