Family name origins & meanings
- Frisian : probably a habitational name for someone from Bant, in the 17th century an island in Friesland, now the village north of Emmeloord in the Noordoostpolder.
- The name Banta was first attested as a family name in New Netherland in 1696, the founder, Epke Jacobs Banta, having arrived in New Netherland in 1659. A family of this name, prominent in NJ in the 1780s, went with the Low Dutch Company to settle in KY.