Knight Family History

English: status or occupational name from Middle English knight ‘retainer attendant’ (Old English cniht ‘boy youth lad’). The specialized feudal sense ‘a high-ranking tenant bound to serve his lord as a mounted soldier’ is not known to have ever given rise to the surname, although it is not out of the question that it may occasionally have been used as a nickname, perhaps for someone who played the part of an armed knight in a local pageant.

Irish: sometimes adopted for Gaelic Mac an Ridire ‘son of the knight’. See also McKnight.