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Etymology •
& Meaning •
Hebrew •
Greek •
Bible •
Names •
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Meaning and etymology of the name Seir
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Seir 
Seir is originally the name of a Horite patriarch (Genesis 36:20) who gave his name to the mountain where his people lived. Jacob's brother Esau dispossessed them (or rather: God gave Seir to Esau; Deuteronomy 2:5, 12) and moved in. His family was already named Edom, so the two rapidly became synonymous. The later Seir covers the area south of the Dead Sea, east of the Negev.
The name Seir comes to us from other languages (probably Horite), but written in Hebrew it looks like it has to do with the unused root  (s'r). Because it isn't used we also don't know what it may have meant. But there are quite a few derivatives of this root extant from which to attempt to distil a common charge:
The noun (se'ar) means hair in general, while the noun  (sa'ara) denotes a single hair; The adjective  (sa'ir) means hairy.
The curious verb (sa'ar), be very afraid. What this verb has to do with the previous nouns is not immidiately obvious, but HAW Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament proposes that it might literally mean to bristle with terror;
The noun (sa'ir) denotes a he-goat (a bristly guy), and the noun (se'ora) denotes barley, also bristly in appearance.
Another verb, which is spelled exactly the same as root , is (sa'ar), meaning to sweep away, whirl away. Derivatives of this verb are: (sa'ar) and (se'ara), both meaning storm.
These things considered, the name Seir must have instilled terror in the hearts of anyone who heard it. The Seirites were known as The Hairy Guys, Bucks, and Riders On The Storm. All the more reason to fear the Edomites, who kicked the original Seirites out.
But that's far from all.
In the Bible there seems to be a certain symbolic meaning to hair, something that is completely lost in modern languages and translations. Read our extensive study on hair in the Bible.
For a meaning of the name Seir, NOBS Study Bible Name List reads Hairy, Shaggy. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names reads Rough, Bristly.
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