Ster

A termination, as in drugster, deemster, game-ster, spinster, denoting skill or occupation, originally of a woman; A.-S. estre, istre, as in tippestre, a female tapster, bācistre, a woman who bakes, sangistre, a female singer, a songstress, sæmestre, a seamstress.

“Many of the surnames with this desinence show the change of English customs in regard to the employments of women within the past few centuries; for example, brewing, baking, and weaving, were formerly feminine labors, and consequently Brewster, Baxter, and Webster mean the woman (not the man) who brews, bakes, or weaves. How these feminine names became transferred to the other gender, so as to become hereditary as surnames, is explained by Mr. Poulson, in his ‘Beverlac,’ p. 128: ‘When men began to invade those departments of industry by which women used to earn an honest livelihood, they retained the feminine appellation for some time, as men-midwives and men-milliners do now; but afterward masculine words drove the feminine ones out of the language, as men had driven the women out of the employments.’” M. A. Lower.