Family name origins & meanings
- Portuguese : nickname from leite ‘milk’ (Late Latin lacte), probably denoting someone with a particularly pale complexion.
- German and Dutch : from the female personal name Aleit(e), a short form of a Germanic name, Adelheid, formed of the elements adal ‘noble’ + heid ‘kind’, ‘sort’, ‘(human) being’.
- Norwegian : habitational name from any of several farmsteads in western Norway named Leite or Leitet, from Old Norse leiti ‘hill’, ‘elevation’.