Family name origins & meanings
- Scottish and northern English : probably an occupational name for a dealer in nuts, from Middle English not(e), nut + man, although Black expresses reservations about this derivation, and it may perhaps be an occupational name for the ‘servant (Middle English man) of someone called Nott’.
- Jewish (Ashkenazic) : nickname for a poor man, from German Not ‘need’, ‘want’ + Mann ‘man’.
- Respelling of German Nothmann, from a short form of a Germanic personal name formed with a cognate of Old High German nōt ‘distress’, ‘force’ + man ‘man’.
- North German : from Middle Low German note ‘companion’ + man ‘man’.