Motte

See also: motte, mõtte, mötte, and møtte

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:

Motte (disambiguation)

Wikipedia

As a French, Walloon, and West Flemish surname, from Old French mot, motte (“embankment, hill, mound”), from Medieval Latin mota (“fortified height”), which could be of Celtic origin and from Gaulish *mutt, *mutta (compare Welsh mwd (“vault, arch, canopy”), Irish móta (“moat”), though this itself could have been borrowed from the English) or otherwise of Germanic origin and from the root of mud. Compare Delamotte, Demotte, Lamotte.
As an English surname, variant of Mott.
As a German surname, perhaps from Motten in Bavaria, first attested 837, from the personal name Moto (compare *mōd (“courage, bravery”)).

Motte

Wolf-Armin von Reitzenstein: Lexikon fränkischer Ortsnamen. Herkunft und Bedeutung. Oberfranken, Mittelfranken, Unterfranken. C. H. Beck, München 2009, S. 151 (eingeschränkte Vorschau in der Google-Buchsuche).

Cognate with Dutch mot and English moth, which see for more.

Motte f (genitive Motte, plural Motten)

Declension of Motte [feminine]

^ Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “moth”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
^ Friedrich Kluge (1883) “Motte”, in John Francis Davis, transl., Etymological Dictionary of the German Language, published 1891