Family name origins & meanings
- Americanized form of southern French De la Chaumette, a topographic name for someone who lived on a chaumette, a high, arid plateau with very little vegetation, derived from a diminutive of chaume ‘bare land’ (a specialized sense of Latin calmus ‘calm’, ‘unruffled’).
- Jean de la Chaumette, from Rochouard, France, became a wealthy colonist in Martinique and subsequently (1722) a tobacco planter in VA. In North America the name was changed to Shumate. See also <xref>Delashmit</xref>.