Bugler Family History

From Middle English bugler ‘one who blows a wild ox horn’, an unrecorded derivative of Middle English (Old French) bugle ‘wild ox’, also ‘horn of the wild ox’ used as a drinking vessel or for blowing in battle or in a hunt. Compare Bugle, which also appears early in Dorset.

Alternatively, it is a variant of Buckler with voicing of /k/ to /g/. MED records that Pluscularii ‘buckle-makers’ is rendered in English as bogelers in a 15th-century Latin-English glossary.

Bugler and Buckler appear in the same Dorset parishes and are presumably variants of the same family name, but Buckler could equally well be a variant of Bugler in (i) with unvoicing of /g/.

In Ireland, this is probably a metathesized variant of Bulger; see Bolger.