The Noble Tribe of Brinker of North America. The ancient German region of the Rhineland was the original home of the ancestors of the Brinker surname. Brinker was a local name, a type of hereditary surname that identified people by the places where they lived. Landowners were the first to use local names, and they often attached the prefix "von", meaning "of" or "from," to the surname. Often, the use of "von" was a mark of aristocratic birth. Local names are by far the most common style of German hereditary surname. Brinker was a name for someone who lived beside a meadow or grassy pasture. Brinker is a topographic surname, which was a type of local name given to a person who resided near a physical feature such as a hill, stream, church, or type of tree.
