The English and German surname Peters, also found in Ireland and Holland is of patronymic origin, being derived from the personal name Peter, from the Greek Petros, from petra meaning “ a rock or a stone.” As a surname it is first recorded at the end of the 12th century, with that of Ralph Peter in the Pipe Rolls of Hertfordshire in 1195. Amongst the early famous name holders was Hugh Peters (1598 - 1660). He was the chaplain to the parliamentary army of Oliver Cromwell, and was executed at Charring Cross in 1660 as a regicide, having signed the death warrant of King Charles 1st in 1648. A notable bearer of the surname Peters was Christian August Friedrich Peters. Christian was a German astronomer. He was the father of astronomer  Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Peters. He was born in Hamburgon the 7th of September 1806 and died in Kiel on the 8th of May 1880. Peters was the son of a merchant and, although he did not attend secondary school regularly, he obtained a good knowledge of mathematics and astronomy. Peters became a name in the literature on the theory of errors for his 1856 note on the estimation of precision using absolute deviations from the mean.