Faulkner surname meaning

Faulkner is an English occupational surname for a falconer. Middle English fauconer or faukner comes from Old French fau(l)connier, for someone who kept and trained falcons—a valued feudal service when falconry was a leading aristocratic sport among medieval elites. Falconer, Falkner, Faulconer, and Falconar are sister spellings. Dictionaries allow a rare metonymic reading for an operator of the light siege gun called a falcon, but the bird-trainer sense is the ordinary one. Occupation is high confidence for that falconry office name.