Family name origins & meanings
- English : topographic name for someone who lived near a place used for archery practice, from Middle English butte ‘mark for archery’, ‘target’, ‘goal’. In the Middle Ages archery practice was a feudal obligation, and every settlement had its practice area.
- English : topographic name from Middle English butte ‘strip of land abutting on a boundary’, ‘short strip or ridge at right angles to other strips in a common field’.
- English : from Middle English butte, bott ‘butt’, ‘cask’, applied as a metonymic occupational name for a cooper or as a nickname possibly for a heavy drinker or for a large, fat man.
- English : from a Middle English personal name, But(t), of unknown origin, perhaps originally a nickname meaning ‘short and stumpy’, and akin to late Middle English butt ‘thick end’, ‘stump’, ‘buttock’ (of Germanic origin).
- German and English : in both Middle Low German and Middle English the word but(te) denoted various types of marine fish, originally a fish with a blunt head, for example halibut (German Heilbutt) or turbot (German Steinbutt), and the surname may in some cases be a metonymic occupational name for a seller of fish or salt fish.
- Kashmiri : variant of Bhatt.
- Robert Butt came from Kent, England, to NC in 1640.