Orgins of these surnames?

Question:My Mother was born in Arkansas, her father was from Tennessee, Mom's maiden name was Baker..her mother was also born in Arkansas with the maiden name of Webb.
her mom had jet black hair and blue eyes, fair skin.
one of my moms brothers was red headed, freckled and blue eyed, all the rest of her siblings were dark brown to black hair haired..anyone know if these are English or Irish last names?
also the last name Pitts..my dads mom. from Kansas.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: My Mother was born in Arkansas, her father was from Tennessee, Mom's maiden name was Baker..her mother was also born in Arkansas with the maiden name of Webb.
her mom had jet black hair and blue eyes, fair skin.
one of my moms brothers was red headed, freckled and blue eyed, all the rest of her siblings were dark brown to black hair haired..anyone know if these are English or Irish last names?
also the last name Pitts..my dads mom. from Kansas.

This is what www.ancestry.com had to say about the names.

Baker

1. English: occupational name, from Middle English bakere, Old English b?cere, a derivative of bacan ‘to bake’. It may have been used for someone whose special task in the kitchen of a great house or castle was the baking of bread, but since most humbler households did their own baking in the Middle Ages, it may also have referred to the owner of a communal oven used by the whole village. The right to be in charge of this and exact money or loaves in return for its use was in many parts of the country a hereditary feudal privilege. Compare Miller. Less often the surname may have been acquired by someone noted for baking particularly fine bread or by a baker of pottery or bricks.
2. Americanized form of cognates or equivalents in many other languages, for example German B?cker, Becker; Dutch Bakker, Bakmann; French Boulanger. For other forms see Hanks and Hodges (1988).

Webb

1. English and Scottish: occupational name for a weaver, early Middle English webbe, from Old English webba (a primary derivative of wefan ‘to weave’; compare Weaver 1). This word survived into Middle English long enough to give rise to the surname, but was already obsolescent as an agent noun; hence the secondary forms with the agent suffixes -er and -ster.
2. Americanized form of various Ashkenazic Jewish cognates, including Weber and Weberman.

Pitts

1. English: variant of Pitt.
2. Americanized spelling of German Pitz.

hope this helps.

English and Irish names are usually interchangable...(yes I know they aren't the same people..but they use the same names..) try googling for info..(there are plenty of sites for looking up names and families..)

When, in the middle ages, towns got bigger and the population began to swell, people started realizing that they needed not only a first name, but a last name as well (the old form of John of 'insert place of birth here' would usually yield a large multitude of Johns). At first, your last name would be what you or your father's occupation was - Carpenter, Smith, and Baker. And yes, the internet can provide you with a geneology tree, or you can delve deeper into the origin of last names at most libraries.

Can't do any better than Itsjustme did in giving the meanings of the surnames. But I do want to warn about something else in your question.

You had quite a few references to physical features. Be warned that select physical features often tell little, and can seriously mislead you often. Just about every physical feature occurs with some frequency in any population. Yes, some populations with higher frequencies than others....but that too can be misleading because often common assumptions are just not true.

Warning - I'm about to do exactly what I am warning you not to do --- assume --- as I am assuming that your reference to your mom's brother who was red headed was the driving factor to your "Irish" possibility of surname origin (and I could definitely be wrong).

But the actual facts may surprise you.... believe it or not, redheads make up a larger percentage of the population of Scotland (13%) than they do in Ireland (10%). In fact, England is at 8% of the population.

So if you KNEW this redhead definitely from England, Scotland or Ireland (ignoring any other area), if you guessed Ireland, you would be WRONG 67% of the time, if you guessed Scotland you would be WRONG 58% of the time and if you guessed England you would be wrong 74% of the time. Note that in each case, you would be wrong more than you are right.

Using physical features to form assuptions about origin can often be worthless, and in some cases, misleading - especially when common beliefs don't match reality.