Family name origins & meanings
- French : from the personal name Privat, Latin Privatus (from privatus ‘private citizen’, i.e. not a public official). This was the name of several early saints, including a bishop of Mende, martyred in the 3rd century.
- English : habitational name from a place in Hampshire, which probably gets its name from an unrecorded Old English word pryfet ‘privet’. This word is found from an early date in place names, for example Privett Farm in Standlynch, Wiltshire, which could be a source of the surname, but as a vocabulary element it is not recorded before the 16th century.