Skeats

Skeat or Skeats is a common English family name and may refer to: Skeat. The name Skeat, Skeats, Skeates, Skett, Skitt and Skates are derived from the Norman French names Scet or Schett, and is mentioned in the Doomsday Book. I can find no entry in the Liverpool entry of Skait.

Ricardus fillus (son of) Schet 1166 is mentioned in the Pipe Rolls of Henry II in Norfolk. There are records of Skeats in Norfolk back to the seventeenth century. Walter Skett, also mentioned in later Pipe Rolls of 1201 appears in Shropshire. There is a mention of the name in the 1275 Rotoli Hundredorum in Norfolk again. Robert Skeet 1327, is mentioned in the Subsidy Rolls of Suffolk. The name is originally the Old Norse skjótt, believed to mean 'swift' or 'fleet', though some think that it may be a "joke" name, denoting people with the opposite characteristics, i.e. the slow and cumbersome. It was also used by the Norse as a personal name. Most of this information is from the English Dictionary of Surnames by Reaney and Wilson and is confirmed to a lesser extent from The Oxford Dictionary of Names.

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