Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from any of the numerous places (in Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, and elsewhere) named Caldecote or Caldecott, from Old English cald ‘cold’ + cot ‘cottage’, ‘dwelling’. It has been suggested that in Old English this expression denoted an unattended shelter for wayfarers, although in fact some places with this name were of considerable status by 1086, when they appear in Domesday Book. In some instances this and some of the other contracted forms may have arisen from Calcot in Berkshire, Collacott(s) in Devon, or Calcutt in Wiltshire, in all of which the first element apparently comes from the Old English personal name Cola (see Cole 2) or the word col ‘(char)coal’, in which case the meaning would be something like ‘coalshed’.