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Nutter is a very old English surname that has nothing whatsoever to do with nuts or crazy people. Like Cooper, Weaver, Mason, Smith, Carter, Cartwright and others, Nutter is an occupational name that indicated the type of work done by the original bearer of the name and that then became hereditary. In this case, the occupation was keeping oxen.
Nutter is derived from nowt, the Middle English word for 'beast' or 'ox', which is in turn derived from Old Norse naut, and is a cognate of Old English neat, meaning 'cattle'. The name of the occupation was "nothard" meaning "keeper of oxen" (just as "shepherd" means someone who keeps sheep). Early examples of this word include: Nicholas le noutehird, entered in the 1296 Register of the Freemen of the City of York, and Henry le Nauthird, noted in Records of Wakefield, Yorkshire, in 1308.
By the mid-sixteenth century, this word had evolved into its current form "Nutter" and was clearly established as an hereditary surname. Not surprisingly, given the word's Norse origin, the area in England where the surname Nutter is most common is Lancashire and Yorkshire, an area raided and settled by Vikings. Many of the first Nutters to settle in the New World came from this region.
Notes
- The English word neat with the meaning of 'cattle' is nearly obsolete, but still survives in the phrase "neatsfoot oil".
- Some writers have speculated that the name derives from a middle English word for notary, but this derivation is not supported by the linguistic evidence.