Hoover is a Swiss family name found among the Mennonites of Germany and North America. A Swiss Anabaptist named Ulrich Huber was executed in 1538, and Hans Huber, a German Anabaptist, was put to death in 1542 at Wasserburg on the Inn. The Hutterite Chronicle contains the martyr record of Wolfgang Hueber, who was executed in Bavaria in 1559. A number of Huebers are mentioned in the Chronicle; there is record, for example, of Caspar Hueber, who was ordained as a preacher in 1557.

More than 50 Hubers immigrated to North America before the Revolutionary War, and these Hubers represented at least four different faith traditions: Mennonite, Lutheran, German Reformed, and Moravian. The ancestor of many of the Mennonite Hoovers was the immigrant Hans Huber (ca. 1670-1750), a Swiss who was married to Margaret Koch. After living for a period in the Palatinate he came to North America in 1710, or soon thereafter, and settled at Mill Creek, Lancaster County, PA. By the 1950s the Hoover family was spread rather widely across the United States and Ontario. Many Hoovers have been ordained in Mennonite Church (MC) conferences. As of 1956, more than a dozen Hoovers had been ordained in the Mennonite Conference of Ontario (now part of Mennonite Church Eastern Canada), and a smaller number in Indiana. Bishop Martin Hoover (MC) settled in Elkhart County, IN in 1845, four years before his death; he had emigrated from Europe and had lived in Lancaster County, PA, Markham, ON, and Ohio. Noah S. Hoover (MC) served as a deacon in the Yellow Creek, IN congregation from 1887 until his death in 1913. The name Hoover also occurs among the Brethren in Christ. Their second Overseer in the Indiana District was a Martin Hoover who evidently served in the second half of the 19th century. Paul Hoover was a minister of the Old Order Mennonites (Wisler) near Goshen, IN.

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