Felt
An English surname most likely from the cloth-making term felt, originally linked to a fuller or wool worker.
The #8,610 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 80,823 Americans shares it.
Etymology
This surname is generally explained from the word felt, the textile made by matting wool together. In surname use, it likely pointed to someone involved in fulling, wool-working, or a related cloth-making trade. The deeper word history is old and mixed, with English forms influenced by earlier Germanic vocabulary associated with beating, pressing, and felting wool.
History
The name is rare in modern Britain and the United States, but it belongs to the older class of English occupational surnames. Nineteenth-century surname writers treated it alongside fuller-related names such as Beater and Bater, reflecting the wool-processing sense. In some cases it may also have arisen as a shortened or altered form of another surname, so not every bearer need descend from the same occupational source.
Origin
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Fun fact
The same word behind the surname is connected to one of the oldest textile processes: making cloth by matting fibers rather than weaving them.
From the historical record
“being very suddenly called to rest on the morning of October 30, 1898. His body was buried in Ulverston, the much-loved scene of his former ministry, and the thousands who followed him to his last resting-place felt that there was much fitness that he who among them for so many years had suffered from loss of sleep…”
— A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, with special American instances