Daft Family History

English (Nottinghamshire): nickname for a modest or well-mannered person from Middle English daffte ‘mild gentle meek’ (Old English gedæfte). By around 1300 the word is occasionally recorded in its modern sense perhaps by false association with Middle English daffe ‘fool simpleton’.

However, this gentry and mercantile surname, which is almost certainly monogenetic, is first attested in and near Nottingham in the early 13th century, when the word's original complimentary sense was the usual one.