Peart

Recorded in several spelling forms including Peart, Peaurt, Peert, Perte, and originally Pert, this is a surname of seemingly Anglo-Scottish origins. Certain dictionaries of surnames claim that it is locational from a village called Pert near Montrose, so called from a Celtic term for a wood or copse. If so this must be a "lost" village, because we have not been able to identify such a place. What we can say is that locational surnames are usually "from" names. That is surnames given to people after they left their original village to move somewhere else. If a village for whatever reason was "closed" as many hundreds were, the inhabitants would have had no choice but to move off somewhere else. This may account for why this name is first recorded in the English county of Yorkshire, and rarely in Scotland at all before the 17th century. These recordings include Henricus Pert in the Poll Tax records of Yorkshire in 1379, Agnes Peert who married Olyuer Barrett on January 22nd 1545, at St. Margaret's, Westminster, whilst Katherine Peart of Nather Towie, Scotland, is recorded in the Sheriff court of Aberdeenshire in 1674. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was sometimes known as the Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.