Virtue

Family name origins & meanings

• English and Scottish : nickname from Middle English, Old French vertu ‘moral worth’; ‘goodness’ (Latin virtus ‘manliness’, ‘valor’, ‘worth’). This may have been bestowed on a good or pious person, it may alternatively have been a sarcastic nickname for a prig, or it may have been borne by someone who had played the part of Virtue in a medieval mystery play.