Who were they?

[rocket118]

My family's roots go back to the mid 1600's, in Suffolk, England.

Who would their ancestors have descended from? Normans? Would a surname of Coote indicate anything?

[Carmy]

I googled "Coote Name Origin" and came up with several sites which gave similar information.

Anglo-Saxon comes up most often, which would make the name pre-Norman.

An entry on one site also touched on Anglo-Saxon in an odd way:

Local Welsh ,Coed, a wood; Cornish British, Coit and Cut. Coot-hill or Coit-hayle, the wood on the river.

Brythonic Celts (Cornwall, Devon and Wales) survived Roman occupation, and the Saxon invaders never quite managed to over-run those areas. (Recent research says there was never a true Saxon invasion of Britain in the way we were taught at school.) Therefore, it seems logical to assume the name Coote originated before or during Roman occupation when much of Britain was inhabited by Celts, Gaels and Picts.

I hope this is of some help.

[Geoffers]

My family's roots go back to the mid 1600's, in Suffolk, England.

Who would their ancestors have descended from? Normans? Would a surname of Coote indicate anything?

Basically - it is impossbile to say.

The surname does not indicate a Norman background; but then again, in itself it does not mean that there was no Norman ancestry. Surnames did not become commonly used until an awful long time after the invasion by William the Bastard.

The family may have be English, or as with many East Anglian families have some Scandinavian ancestry; or possibly Dutch.

The chances of tracing a family history back much further than the 16th century (and therefore the origins of a family) range from very slim to none.

[Nicolina]

a lot of surnames originated with occupations of even the place a person lived. Some of these then evolved into varients. I have Hemsley which was Helmsley, a place in Yorkshire, where they seem to have originated. Another of my main lines appears to be French but comes from the Forest of Dean area, and is an adaptation of a title.

[Vance Mead]

As Geoffers said, surnames developed only a long time after 1066. Most surnames ony became permanent and hereditary in the 1300s.

I saw a TV show about a year ago about DNA testing in different parts of England. In East Anglia most people were descended from Danes and Anglo-Saxons (who came from around the same area and couldn't be differentiated genetically.)

[Peter Goodey]

Reaney is of the view that Coote is one of the group of surname that derived from a nickname, in this case from the name of the bird. Bearing in mind the old expression 'bald as a coot', perhaps the nickname meant 'Baldy'.

Personally I'm of the opinion that the only way to be certain about the origin of a surname is to trace it back to its origin

[Jan1954]

You may find this to be of interest - as well as this.

[Geoffers]

Personally I'm of the opinion that the only way to be certain about the origin of a surname is to trace it back to its origin

...........Just about sums things up for me.

My lot were definitely bog dwellers.

...........and i bet even now you're still always in the s... (maybe we're related???) - not much has changed over the centuries!

[spison]

Reaney is of the view that Coote is one of the group of surname that derived from a nickname, in this case from the name of the bird. Personally I'm of the opinion that the only way to be certain about the origin of a surname is to trace it back to its origin

Peter,
Who or what is Reaney? (I did google it and nothing looked appropriate for names.)

Jane