Family name origins & meanings
- South German : nickname from Middle High German hert(e) ‘hard’, ‘coarse’, ‘crude’; perhaps occasionally also from a house name, from herde ‘stove’.
- German : from a personal name, Herto, a short form of any of the Germanic compound names beginning with hard ‘hardy’, ‘brave’, ‘strong’.
- Dutch : variant of Herd 3.