Family name origins & meanings
- English : nickname from the wild boar, Middle English galte, gaute, gault (Old Norse gǫltr). Wild boars were common in the British Isles from the earliest times, and became extinct only with the clearing of the large tracts of forest which formerly covered the country; hunting them was a favorite pastime in the Middle Ages.
- French : from Germanic walþu- ‘wood’, ‘forest’; a topographic name for someone who lived in or near a wood, or a habitational name for someone from any of the places named with this word, for example Le Gault in Loir-et-Cher, Marne, and Eure-et-Loir.