Cotte Family History

French: metonymic occupational name for a maker or seller of a kind of long-sleeved tunic worn in the Middle Ages by farmers of both sexes or of a chain mail from Old French cot(t)e ‘long-sleeved tunic, coat of mail, surcoat’. See also 2 below.

French (Cotté): nickname for a wearer of a kind of long-sleeved tunic (see 1 above) or less likely of a chain mail, a protection which only the richest classes who already had distinguished surnames of their own could afford.

French: habitational name from (La) Cotte, the name of several places in various parts of France.

German: variant of Kotte, a surname which is in part of Sorbian origin.