Fitzotter meaning | Last name Fitzotter origin

The surname Fitzotter is derivation of Otter. A Scandinavian personal name of great antiquity, and common application. It is variously spelt Otter, Ohter, Other, Othyr, Ottyr, Oter, and in Domesday book, Otre. In some one or other of these forms it occurs also in the Saxon Chronicle, the Annales Cambriæ, and the Dublin Annals. A lately-decyphered inscription on a cross in the Isle of Man reads— "Otr raised this cross to Fruki, his father." As a family name, it has existed from time immemorial in the "Danish" or Northman counties of East Yorkshire, Nottingham, Lincoln and Derby, where there is almost a clan of Otters, though the name is rarely to be met with in other counties, and scarcely appears at all in the metropolis. Walter Fitz- Other, the celebrated castellan of Windsor, temp. William I, the reputed ancestor of the Fitzgeralds, Gerards, Windsors, and other great houses, was the son of Otherus, a great landowner under the Confessor, but whether the latter was of Norse descent does not appear; there is, however, something like armorial evidence of the connection of the Otters with the families alluded to. Ingram, in his translation of the Saxon Chronicle, says that Otter was "originally 'oht-here' or 'ochthere,' i.e. Terror of an Army."

The Fitzotter is a derivation of Otter. Dweller at the sign of the otter; descendant of Otthar meaning "terrible, army"; dweller at the Otter meaning "otter stream," a river in England.

Family name is an adaptation of Other. See Otter - A Scandinavian personal name of great antiquity, and common application. It is variously spelt Otter, Ohter, Other, Othyr, Ottyr, Oter, and in Domesday book, Otre. In some one or other of these forms it occurs also in the Saxon Chronicle, the Annales Cambriæ, and the Dublin Annals. A lately-decyphered inscription on a cross in the Isle of Man reads— "Otr raised this cross to Fruki, his father." As a family name, it has existed from time immemorial in the "Danish" or Northman counties of East Yorkshire, Nottingham, Lincoln and Derby, where there is almost a clan of Otters, though the name is rarely to be met with in other counties, and scarcely appears at all in the metropolis. Walter Fitz- Other, the celebrated castellan of Windsor, temp. William I, the reputed ancestor of the Fitzgeralds, Gerards, Windsors, and other great houses, was the son of Otherus, a great landowner under the Confessor, but whether the latter was of Norse descent does not appear; there is, however, something like armorial evidence of the connection of the Otters with the families alluded to. Ingram, in his translation of the Saxon Chronicle, says that Otter was "originally 'oht-here' or 'ochthere,' i.e. Terror of an Army."