upload image

Suggitt name origins, meaning, variations

Privacy Level: Open (White)

Location: Yorkshire, Englandmap
Surname/tag: Suggitt, Suggit, Sugget, Suggett, Suggate, Southgate
Profile manager: Mark Suggitt private message [send private message]
This page has been accessed 178 times.

Contents

Suggitt surname origins

Sugget <— suth+get <— "south+gate" <— suð+gata.

Broadly speaking, Sugget/ett/it/itt seems to find its centre in North Yorkshire[1][2]. Whereas Southgate/Suggate appears to be preserved in East Anglia. Both are subject to the Old English and Old Norse roots of the -gate suffix... i.e. entrance/portal (OE) geat versus a roadway or street (ON) gata. The north-south distinction may stem from the Norman period, eg. resulting in Normanised de Sudgate 12th-13th century (gate is a Saxon/Dane word, not Old French) in the south, and a defiant rural post-Danelaw north. The distinction in spelling may simply come down to how the name was spoken and then heard by the scribe when it was first written down.

More about gate?

Gate has conceptually diverging but complementary meanings in the pre-Norman period. Whether gata as the road or geat as the town entrance the road travels into. They could be understood as equivalent to Saxon and Dane inhabitants. Gate meaning portal/entrance/doorway is almost universally the perceived and intended meaning in the modern context. Gate as roadway/route/way is less obvious, but even today there are city streets and historic routes using -gate suffix in the same way as one might use street or road; they appear sometimes as a compound word and often as a separate second term, and even in this context most people will receive the meaning as referring to a fortified gate or entrance. Most surname resources completely ignore the street/roadway option. The following discussion supports the option for the roots of Sugget as a compound surname derived from Old English and Old Norse terms, with -gate as road/route/way (see "as spoken" below). This is not to say all similarly compounded names follow this meaning, but is a viable widespread meaning hidden in plain view. A similar analysis could be made with with names like Leggett, Blogget, Edgett, Baggett, Raggett or Haggett, etc. and may even shed new light on names in popular culture, eg. Watergate, Lionsgate, Colegate or Seagate. Even Bill Gates[3] is not immune to this inquiry.

Spelling variations found in Yorkshire and Canada, following a single family branch over seven generations 1800-1900 researching this surname:

Suggitt, Suggett, Suggit, Sugget and Suggate.

...also found mis-heard, mis-written and mis-transcription examples include:

Luggate, Sucket, Slugget (... ad nauseum).

M.A. Lower's Patronymica Britannica (1860):"

GATE: From residence near either the gate of a fortified town, or of a chase, forest, or the like. Its medieval forms are Ate Gate and Atte Gate, which have since the XV. cent, modified to Agate, Gater, and especially to Gates, now one of the commonest of surnames. In North Britain gate is equivalent to way; as in the phrase, "Gang your Gate" for "Go your way.[4]

Looking at all the -gate appended names this author includes in his text, this is the only instance, the entry for the standalone name Gate, that M.A. Lower recognises the gate = way alternative even clearly stating it being a North Britain phenomenon. None of the other -gate compound surnames suggest the "the way" to explain the name, relying on explaining the name as an affectation or diminutive. Still, the above quote clearly shows the two main approaches explaining -gate/-get/-git appended surnames, that is either a guarded hole in a wall and a path to walk on.

regarding Southgate...

The modern surname Southgate, as spelt, a regardless of meaning, could have a common connection to Suggitt but there is no overt link other than it modified as people moved north from the south of England and when finally filtered by dialect and trained ear landed as Suggett. Timing for the transformation would be 1100-1400.

There is an interesting early variation in the form of Robert Sowgate (d1623) [5] in Suffolk, whose daughter is Ann Suggate (b1588) and her brother Robert whose children are variably recorded as Sowgate, Sowthgate and Southgate. The Old Norse word 'sow' (sáð), pronounced ~sowth, means 'seed' (Old English 'saed'), and survives in modern use as to sow/seed/plant...and this leads away from the southgate being derived from the direction or place, instead suggests the activity of planting, and interestingly shows uncertainty about the 'th' before -gate, sometimes added, sometimes missing.

Whether or not the modern surnames Suggitt and Southgate have a common origin, it seems that Suggitt is of the northeast of England, and Southgate from the south and southeast[6]. The constraint on how recent they (might have) split is the existence of 'Suggett', recorded in York in 1516 — one might reasonably extrapolate the existence of this surname backward one or two generations to maybe 1450. Alternatively, what if Ric. Suggett of York was actually a recent Southgate transplant, from the south, and the name transcribed to fit a northern dialect in the Corpus Cristi text. It does appear Southgate is well established in the south by this time. Other narratives might consider historic realities such as the Norman 'harrowing of the north' and subsequent Norman class division over the resident Saxon-Dane-identified population; in this case southern dialect 'Southgate' variants tended toward the modern spelling. However limited the scope or logic of what's been presented, any consideration of this topic should recognise the likelihood a south+gate name has risen independently multiple times in different places and times and at best we can only recognise possible paths.

Great Vowel Shift

Pronunciation has changed over time. Verb change from middle English to modern English 1200-1800 as relates to Suggitt would involve the 'u' and 'e/i'. This will be fairly involved to transpose the name backwards without forcing an answer we might expect rather than a true best answer. So I'll leave it for experts and provide a set of links to follow up:

Great Vowel Shift, Harvard (Reading Chaucer)[7]
Great Vowel Shift, Wikipedia[8]
Great Vowel Shift, web search[9]

example of spelling variability in 18-19th century Yorkshire:

UK census records 1841-1871 for William Suggitt (1788-1875) are consistently Suggitt, while his birth record cites Suggate and father is Sugget.

example of consistency in the variability over time, eg. 16th century Yorkshire:

Historical surname example from a single 1516 record from the City of York Festival of Corpus Cristi, show Ric. Suggett (et uxor) spelling was already in use, and printed directly below in the same list is Wil. Sugget (sic) [10]. Granted, this may simply be a case of the typesetter running short of t's to typeset with.

South-gate or South-road...

Broadly speaking, Suggitt is a toponymic surname [11] ostensibly derived from Old English and literally taken to mean south-gate, eg. a person associated with the south gate of a town. Surname dictionaries invariably claim the origins go back to Norman times and where, conveniently, surnames sprang into existence in the general population because taxes, land use and the Norman way...in the form of Osbert de Sudgate (1197 - Pipe Rolls of Essex), Alice de Southgate (1327 - Subsidy rolls of Suffolk), etc. ...and note 'gate' is not a word of Old French origin, and so in the context of Norman conquest, is a borrowed Saxon/Norse word. (I wonder if Osbert's 'Sudgate' is in fact Suðgate... the eth 'ð' taken as a 'd' by later transcribers.)

Moving ahead to the 16th century, the spelt form Suggitt/Suggit/Suggett/Sugget is established and it is primarily a Yorkshire/northeast name. Also, it's not a name of the upper class, and only one example of possibly middle-class. Therefore one must consider the continuing influence of Old Norse [12] from the Danelaw period, on north-eastern place names, surnames, and common agrarian language in general. In this case gate takes the Old Norse meaning of road, and Suggitt would mean south-road or south-route. There remain to this day a quantity of city street names carrying the word -gate that have no relation to entrances or fortifications (see reading list below, ie, York, Nottingham), and rural roadways.

The Place-Names of The North Riding Of Yorkshire, English Place-Name Society - Vol. V, by A.H.Smith, 1979, page 326... [13]

...gata is very common compounded with a pers. name or a word denoting ownership or use as in Levedygate (13th), Wayncarlegate (c. 1175) from OE wwgen 'waggon,' Scotgate (i3th) from Scot 'a Scotsman.' In other cases the significant word denotes some object to which the road leads as in Birgate (1227) from byre, Marketesgathe (13th), Kirkegate (121o) etc. One may also note Meregate (c. 1160) from (ge)rnwre 'a boundary road' and Blingate (1193-9) from blind, probably indicating a cul-de-sac.

Common tongue...

Old Norse and Old English were partially inter-operable. Dane settlers and Saxons mixed, this is well known, and common words would tend to be reinforced in everyday use.

South meant 'south' in O.E. and O.N., and 'gate' can mean an actual gate/entrance (O.E.) or a road, street or route (O.N.). It may be a matter of semantics whether you refer to the gate structure, the hole passing through it, or the roadway that hole was built for. Saxons may simply be speaking from perspective of fortification construction, i.e. gates and walls, whereas the Danes from trade and migration, i.e. roads and market routes.

Modern Scandinavian descendants retain a strong preference for gate to mean road; eg. Norwegian uses both 'gate' and 'gata' in the naming of streets. In Iceland 'gata' is found in street names, and in Swedish 'gatan' binomial street names are common — some towns use -gatan for every street (eg. Nossebro, Sweden). It is interesting, possibly ironic, that modern Danish has not preserved this meaning to the degree the other Scandinavian languages have. Modern England '-gate' street names tend to be in the older areas near the centre of town; some cities have many gate streets and many have none whatsoever. Finding -gate street names in Canada, Australia, and United States are not uncommon, but these are largely cities built in the last century and city officials are using standard naming guides as suburban sprawl and whim dictate, and more common to be part of the street name with "Street" or "Avenue" appended, eg. Eastgate Ave., Applegate St., Harrogate Dr. ...literally Eaststreet Ave., Applestreet St., and Harrostreet Dr. ...recognising the probability that none of the city officials would have had any appreciation for distinctions between O.E./O.N. common usage.

Etymology...

Most indicators place Suggitt origins in Yorkshire, broadly northeast England. The region is teeming with linguistic and place-name Danelaw hold-overs where the meaning falls on the Old Norse side (eg -thorp, -by, -fell, -dale, etc.).

Old English geat and Old Norse gata are both derived from proto-germanic gatan...

gate (n.): "opening, entrance", Old English geat (plural geatu) "gate, door, opening, passage, hinged framework barrier," from Proto-Germanic *gatan (source also of Old Norse gat "opening, passage," Old Saxon gat "eye of a needle, hole," Old Frisian gat "hole, opening," Dutch gat "gap, hole, breach," German Gasse "street, lane, alley"), of unknown origin.
... Finnish "katu, Lettish gatua "street" are Germanic loan-words.
— Online Etymology Dictionary - gate:

and the related word gait...

gait (n.) c. 1300, gate "a going or walking, departure, journey," earlier "way, road, path" (c. 1200), from a Scandinavian source (compare Old Norse gata "way, road, path"), from Proto-Germanic *gatwon "a going" (source also of Old High German gazza "street," German Gasse "a way, road," Gothic gatwo)
— Online Etymology Dictionary - gait:

The above source speculates a Proto Indo-European origin ...

  • ghe- "to release, let go."

"gated" place names...

There are many examples of old and middle English place-names where a descriptive word is placed in front of -gate, for example: Harrogate (North Riding), Huggate (East Riding), Lyngate (West Riding), Wingate (Durham).

city streets and rural routes...

Many examples of old cross-country roads, for example: Howlgate (road through the hollow), Slatergate (over the moors from Pickering to Whitby), Belmangate (Road to Belmont), Kirkgate (church road), Windgate (wagon road), Gate Helmsley (road on the way to York from Malton), Calgate (Galway Road).

City street names using -gate are widespread. For example the City of York... Ousegate, Coppergate, Nessgate, Spurriergate, Colliergate, Carter Gate, Barker Gate, etc. (see reading list below) which indicate the role or location, eg shoe-maker-street, river Ouse street, coal(merchants)-street etc. Streets in other cities follow a similar path.

similar surnames...

Examples of similarly constructed surnames that at least have a superficial similarity to Suggitt and some which may have a similar origin: Hugget, Legget, Bygate, Baggett, Bloggett, Colegate, Dengate, Edgett, Felgate, Hadigate, Millgate, Postgate, Wallgate, Tarngate, Wreghitt, Raggett, Edgett, Fellgate, Haggett, Hardgate ...etc., all subject to minor spelling variation. Most of these names are associated with Yorkshire and it's here you find variations with -gate/-get/-git. Several may have no relation to the ON 'geat/gate' origins, but have converged to the modern 'gg' 'tt' form.

As spoken...

A speaker living in the Yorkshire region 1000 years ago, in daily contact with these two languages, will combine these two very similar words:

...in Old English: súþ + geat ...roughly sooth+get
...in Old Norse: suður + gata ...roughly sooth-r+ga-ta
('þ' and 'ð' letters are roughly the same sound, 'th', but voiced slightly differently)

...at some point the two merge into a single new word, condensed for verbal efficacy, passed along through generations, and shaped by dialect and vowel shift. Súþ gate and suður gata becomes some speculative middle spoken form like 'Su-get' or 'Su-geta' and recognizably recorded on paper as Suggett by 1500 or so — implying at least the father and grandfather of the above Ric. Suggett of York, 1516, would have been recorded similarly, and so it could be said that the surname 'Sugget' (in Yorkshire) dates at least to the early-to-mid-1400s.

modern usage...

Modern English is mixed use but the predominant accepted common understanding of a given town, street or roadway having a -gate name is in reference to a fortified gate, portal or entrance. Few English speakers today would be aware of the Old Norse interpretation. The reader is invited to consider gate-as-roadway in every encounter with a gate-name (eg. Watergate, Lionsgate, Goldengate, Applegate, Southgate) and decide if road or portal.

A Most compelling ancient example...

The following passage serves to illustrate the use of -gate in ancient street names, also, an example of defacto renaming of sections of an officially named street; and, not least, an actual bona fide example of a street section being called Southgate, literally the south section of a longer roadway absent of any sort of gate or portal structure...

"The charter granted by Abbot Richard between 1177 and 1189 mentioned four principal ways into the town of Whitby. These may be supposed to be identical with the four principal streets of the old town, namely, Church Street, Haggersgate, Flowergate, and Baxtergate, the three last meeting formerly on the west bank of the river. Here Flowergate and Baxtergate now meet, but a block of buildings occupies what was the south end of Haggersgate. Church Street on the east bank extends from the Church Stairs until it meets Green Lane from the east at Spital Bridge, where the leper hospital of St. Michael was established in 1109. Gallows Close lies near to Spital Bridge. The whole extent of Church Street, or Kirkgate (1318), was divided into Highgate, Crossgate, and Southgate. Crossgate, probably named from the market cross, and Southgate are both mentioned in 1426." The present Church Street contains several houses of 17th-century date, as well as modern buildings of Elizabethan character. On the eastern side is the Seamen's Hospital, founded in 1676."
—The Victoria History of the County of York North Riding (Vol. II) - W. Page, F.S.A. (ed), The University of London Inst. of Historical Research, 1968, page 507-508; borrow from Archive.org;

Alternate variations and definitions

Southgate: The literal 'Southgate' i.e. south+gate [14] version of the name could be a purely Old English name derived separately and in parallel to the Suggett examples. There is a suggestion that Southgate is centred in Norfolk, versus Suggett in Yorkshire. The name could also be entirely outside of Nordic influence with it's own unique familial history and with gate taking the obvious entrance/portal meaning. The Surname Database sets the origin of Southgate in 12th century Middlesex. It's surname linguistic kin are Northgate, Westgate, Aldergate, and so on, all implying the gate in the english context of a castle, town or city entrance, and implying a physical fortification. At the same time it could be possible for a common origin, with an intentional 'south' and 'gate-as-roadway' preserved in southern English dialects perhaps.

Sug- = sucga = sparrow An alternative to 'su-' being a condensed OE/ON 'south' is 'sucga' or 'sugga', OE for 'sparrow'. I found only one place-name example, compared to widespread use of 'south' being used in compound words from OE/ON súþ or suður. However, Suggitt as Sucga-gaet (Sparrow-road), is an interesting if not romantic suggestion ...or sparrow-gate OE for that matter, or, in the genitive sense 'sing' ~sparrow-song + road ~"birdsongroad" ...Sucg-gaet.

Sugnall = Sparrow Hill. Stotehelle (for Soce-) 1086, Sugenhulle 1222, Sogenhul 1242. OE *sucga, genitive sing. *sucgan, genitive pl. * sucgena, + hyll. The exact species of bird is uncertain, possibly a titlark or wagtail; OE hegesugge surviving as dial. haysuck meant 'hedge-sparrow'.

— source: The Cambridge dictionary of English place-names : based on the collections of the English Place-Name Society; Watts, V.E. (ed), Cambridge University press, 717 pages; ISBN: 9780521168557 05211685542010. Archive.org

sucga, sugga - a kind of bird, whitethroat?, titlark?, wagtail?

— source: Old Engli.sh Dictionary

gate = pasture I've found a couple of references in passing of -gate ON referring to a pasture area, possibly in a small valley or on poor land. Like sparrow, this is a rare instance but worth looking into. Name permutations expand: south-gate / south-road, sparrow-gate / sparrow-road, south-pasture vs sparrow-pasture...

I will update this when I can relocate these sources.

Research Notes

There's no way to know exactly how ancient the name Suggitt is, but it would've been formalized after 1070 with the re-distribution of land to Norman aristocracy, and before the first recorded instances of it, which in this case is 1516 when Richard Suggett and his wife (et uxor.), and another, a William Sugget (sic) (brother? father?), pops up in the rolls of the Guild of Corpus Christi [15] in the city of York, an annually appointed roster of "chaplains and other worthy parsons" (a.k.a. parade, donor and festival volunteers) (the Guild was an organising committee, founded in York in 1408, for the Feast of Corpus Christi [16]. In any case the name is at once fully formed and variable in spelling by 1516. It is possible the name survives in earlier records yet to be identified.


reading list...

Reading list in pursuit of the usage of 'gate' as street/road/route:

Sources

  1. ↑ https://your-family-history.com/surname/s/suggitt/
  2. ↑ Surname statistics by Forebear https://forebears.io/surnames/suggitt
  3. ↑ https://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Gates
  4. ↑ Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom; by Lower, Mark Antony, 1813-1876, London: J.R. Smith, 443 pages; Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/patronymicabrita00lowe/page/126/mode/2up?q=*gate;
  5. ↑ https://southgate.one-name.net/
  6. ↑ https://southgate.one-name.net/
  7. ↑ https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/great-vowel-shift
  8. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
  9. ↑ https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=great+vowel+shift&ia=web
  10. ↑ Guild of Corpus Christi https://archive.org/details/registerofguildo00guilrich/page/186/mode/2up
  11. ↑ Suggitt, Surname database https://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Suggitt
  12. ↑ https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/139-norse-words 139 Old Norse Words That Invaded The English Language
  13. ↑ https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/epns/downloads.aspx
  14. ↑ Southgate, Surname database https://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Southgate
  15. ↑ Guild of Corpus Christi https://archive.org/details/registerofguildo00guilrich/page/186/mode/2up
  16. ↑ Feast of Corpus Christi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_Corpus_Christi




Collaboration
  • Login to edit this profile and add images.
  • Private Messages: Send a private message to the Profile Manager. (Best when privacy is an issue.)
  • Public Comments: Login to post. (Best for messages specifically directed to those editing this profile. Limit 20 per day.)


Comments

Leave a message for others who see this profile.
There are no comments yet.
Login to post a comment.