Coate Family History

English (Somerset): habitational name from any of several places called from Old or Middle English cot(e) ‘cottage’ such as Coat (Somerset), Coate (Wiltshire), or Cote (Oxfordshire). The placenames literally meant ‘the cottage(s) or hut(s)’; hence the medieval surname forms de la Cote and atte Cote.

It is possible that some of the medieval surnames denoted someone who lived at a particular cottage known as such within a village or one who worked from a hut, but a topographic origin is most likely for the modern hereditary surname.

Medieval and post-medieval forms of the placename often vacillate between singular and plural versions. See Coates.

Americanized form of German Koth or some other similar (like-sounding) surname.