Patterson Family History

Scottish and northern English: variant of Patrickson ‘son of Patrick’ which was either shortened to Patrison and metathesized to Patterson or shortened from Paterickson to Patterson. Irish: in Ulster this name is of English or Scottish origin but in County Galway it was also taken by bearers of the Gaelic name Ó Caisín ‘descendant of the little curly-headed one’ (from Gaelic casín ‘curly’) which is usually Anglicized as Cussane.

In addition to the confusion between Irish Gaelic casín ‘curly’ and cosán ‘path’, there has also been an erroneous assumption that the English name Patterson is somehow derived from the English word path. English: 19th-century variant of Patteson, a shortened form of Pattinson.