Occupational surname for one who fulls (thickens and cleans) wool cloth.
Fuller began as an English occupational surname for someone who fulled cloth — a skilled step in medieval textile production in which woven woollen fabric was cleansed, thickened, and felted by soaking and pounding it, traditionally by treading it underfoot in water and fulling earth. The occupation was common enough throughout medieval England that Fuller became one of the country's most widespread surnames, alongside cognates like Tucker and Walker, which describe different stages of the same process. As a given name, Fuller belongs to the nineteenth-century American fashion for using distinguished family surnames as first names, a tradition that produced Emerson, Alcott, and Lincoln as given names in the same era.
The name's most intellectually prominent bearer is Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983), the American architect, systems theorist, author, and futurist best known for popularising the geodesic dome. His work on tensegrity, synergetics, and resource efficiency made him a touchstone for ecological thinking and design optimism in the latter twentieth century; the carbon molecule C₆₀ is named buckminsterfullerene in his honour. He was, in his own words, a comprehensivist — someone who insisted on thinking about the whole system rather than any single part.
As a first name in current use, Fuller is part of the broad move toward surname-style given names that has been reshaping English-language naming for two decades. It sits alongside Archer, Fletcher, and Thatcher — trades-derived surnames with a sturdy Anglo-Saxon texture. It is strong without being heavy, has a clear single nickname (Full is unlikely; Ful is an option, but most bearers simply go by Fuller), and carries an unassuming intellectual pedigree via Buckminster that parents with a design or sustainability bent often find quietly appealing.