Origin and popularity of the name SCOTT

Origin

Scott : 1: English Scottish and Irish (Down): habitational and ethnic name from Middle English Scot ‘man from Scotland’. There is no evidence that the surname denoted either of the earlier senses of Scot as ‘(Gaelic-speaking) Irishman’ or ‘man from Alba’ the Gaelic-speaking region of Scotland north of the river Forth. This surname is also very common among African Americans.2: English and Scottish: from the rare Middle English personal name Scot (Old English Scott possibly also Old Norse Skotr) only certainly attested in northern England.3: English: variant of Scutt.

Scotchmer : apparently from an unidentified locality in Suffolk named either from a marsh (Old English mōr) a pool (Old English mere) or a boundary (Old English (ge)mǣre) associated with a man named Scot either with the Old and Middle English given name Scot(t) the ethnic name Scott ‘Scot’ or the surname Scott. However if the surnames of John Schotymere (1447) John Shotymer (1492) and Thomas Schotmer (1668) belong here it is possible that spellings like Skottismore and Scotchmore represent altered forms by folk etymology of another unidentified place-name *Shotemere with a different first element such as the Old English personal name Scēot or Old English sc(e)ota ‘trout’ hence ‘Scēot's pool’ or ‘trout pool’. Alternatively Keith Briggs suggests that Shotymere might be a compound of Old English Scēot Old English *scēot ‘steep slope’ or Old English sc(e)ot ‘shooting; a projecting piece of land (?)’ + Old English (ge)mǣre ‘boundary’. The first elements probably occur in Shotford Heath Shotley and Shottisham in Suffolk.

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Surname frequency

Geographic distribution of the 486,769 individuals with the name SCOTT on Geneanet.

This last name in the family trees

See below the Geneanet members' family trees which contain the last name SCOTT