Alcott
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Frequency: (541)
(number of times this surname appears in a sample database of 88.7 million names, representing one third of the 1997 US population)
English: ostensibly a topographic name containing Middle English cott, cote ‘cottage’ (see Coates). In fact, however, it is generally if not always an alteration of Alcock, in part at least for euphemistic reasons.
FOREBEARS: Louisa May Alcott (1832-88), author of Little Women (1869), was the daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), who had changed the family name from Alcox. The family trace their descent from an Alcocke family who emigrated from England to MA with John Winthrop in 1629.
See the Key to the Dictionary or consult the General Introduction for further explanation.
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Copyrights:
Oxford Dictionary of Family Names
Dictionary of American Family Names. Copyright © 2006 Patrick Hanks. All rights reserved.
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Mentioned in
Aucutt
(family name)
Olcott
(family name)
Amos Bronson Alcott
(literature)
Alcott, Louisa May
(American writer and reformer)
Wolcott
(city, Connecticut)
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