Family name origins & meanings
- Southern French : metonymic occupational name for a gardener or topographic name for someone who lived near an enclosed garden, Occitan ort (Latin hortus).
- German : from a Germanic personal name Ort, a short form of the various compound names with the first element ord ‘point’ (of a sword, spear).
- German : topographic name for someone who lived at the top of a hill or the end of a settlement, from Middle High German ort (see 2 above), in the transferred sense ‘tip’, ‘extremity’. In modern German the word has come to mean ‘point’, ‘spot’, ‘place’.