Cottle
A surname most likely from a place name in Wiltshire, England, meaning someone who came from Cottle/Cottles.
The #6,632 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 60,444 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Cottle is usually explained as a locational surname, from the Wiltshire place formerly written Cothull and later associated with Cottles. The place-name element is not fully certain from the old sources, but the surname itself clearly points to origin in that locality. Older surname dictionaries also mention it alongside related forms like Cotton, though Cottle appears to have its own separate local origin.
History
19th-century surname writers such as Bardsley and Lower connected Cottle with a Wiltshire locality, and Lower specifically suggested the district now called Cottles. The name is best known in England and later in English-speaking countries through emigration. One well-known bearer was the poet and bookseller Amos Cottle, whom Byron famously mocked in verse.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Byron’s satirical line about Amos Cottle helped make the surname unusually memorable in literary history.
From the historical record
“and Northampton. COTTLE. Perhaps from the district now called Cottles in Wiltshire. COTTON. Cottun, a place in the de- partment of Calvados in Normandy ; also several parishes in the counties of York, Chester, Staft'ord, &c. Both forms, viz. De Cottun, and De Cotton, are foimd in the H.R. The Eng. Gazetteer gives…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom