This writeup regarding the origin of the name "Jester", came from boards.ancestry.com. It was posted by Lynette Jester on 18 Feb 2002
Supposedly, a court jester by the name of Phillip Crule petitoned the court of Henry V in the 1400s, to change his name to Jester. But this is unproven. I paid a genealogist located in England to research this, and he didn't find anything, before he wanted more money.
There is supposedly a coat of arms, I have copies of 3, but even tho they are nice to have and look at, they actually don't mean anything, because Americans don't use them, we don't supply the Crown with troops, arms, food, or money. The coats of arms were given to the nobility and merchant class who supplied the Crown with what it took to finance their wars.
The word Jester comes from a Sufi sect called Chisti, part of the dervishes. The Chisti wore patchwork robes, carried the rattles, and wore funny hats that we associate with the Joker on playing cards.
Chist is a Spanish root word meaning, Joke or Jest. Then going to the French Jestier, with the same meaning, then to English. And first used by Chaucer in the English language in a lesser know work in either the 1200s or 1300s.
Now following the history of the world, Mohammad conquered the Arab world with his new religion in the 600s.
The Saracens invaded Spain in 711, since the word was originally of an Arabic dialect, then the Sufi probably went with the Saracens to Spain. And from there the word went thru its evolution into what we know it today.
At that time period, it would take approximately 400 years for a word to become ingrained in a language, changed from the original word to a corrupted version of the new language, and commonly used by the new language.
Descendents of the original Saracen invaders would have traveled to France, and later into England. Spain and France did not have the same boundries then as they do today and have gone thru many name changes also.
My research on this includes The Oxford dictionary, The Sufi by Idres Shah, the Encyclopedia, and a brother who is a Social Cultural anthropologist, who has also been researching the Origins of Jester.
On 11 April 1999 Pat Friesien (x-jester), the administrator of the Jester-L mailing list at Rootweb.com, posted this tidbit of information
The earliest recorded instance of the name in English documents dates from as early as 1377. In that year, the Court Rolls of the Borough of Colchester recorded one John Gestour as living in the county of Essex. The name however, was not widespread in Enland, few cases being documented until much later when in 1666, the baptism of one Elizabeth, daughter to Christopher Jester, was recorded in the church register of St. James', Clerkenwell.
More recently, this information was greatly expanded upon by Lynette. Some additional information regarding the miracle plays and an additional language was added by anthropologist and historian Drew F. Teague. This wonderful exposition can be found at the Jester Name Study Site.