The family is Native American, especially around Fort Belknap, and are associated with the Gros Ventre (Aaniiih) tribe. In the west, when names of Native Americans were first being put down on paper, sometimes whoever was writing used their english nickname like William as the given name, and used the english translation of their native language name as their surname. After that, subsequent generations passed the surname down as is usual in white culture. Sometimes, over the years, the names morphed. They might run multiple words together into one word or shorten a long name (. But multi-word Native American names like Cut the Rope are still in use.
This wasn't always the case though. Sometimes english surnames were just picked or assigned. Sometimes an english phonetic spelling of their native language name was used.
