Auguste
A French surname and given-name surname ultimately from Latin Augustus, meaning “venerable” or “esteemed.”
The #8,323 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 77,555 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Auguste is the French form of the Roman name Augustus, from Latin augustus, meaning “venerable,” “consecrated,” or “majestic.” As a surname, it likely began as a metronymic or patronymic from a personal name rather than from a trade or place. In older surname dictionaries it is treated simply as the French equivalent of August or Augustus.
History
The name spread in France as both a given name and a surname, and it also appears in English-language records through French immigration. Nineteenth-century surname writers routinely linked it with Augustine/Augustus forms, reflecting the common European habit of turning personal names into hereditary surnames. In modern usage it is especially associated with French- and Haitian-background families, though the historical surname form is broader than any single region.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some older English surname books explicitly gloss Auguste as “the Fr. form of Augustus.”
From the historical record
“AUGUST (Ger.) \ forms of Lat. Altgustus: see AUGUSTE (Fr.) J under Austin in Diet. BACH (Ger.) Brook [M.H.Ger.bach, O.H.Ger. bah(h] Eng. Bach(e, i Batch, and lA.-Scfeind. Beck. BARRAUD (Fr.) see under Barpat(t' in Diet. BAUER (Ger.) Peasant, Husbandman [M.H.Ger. gebure, O.H.Ger. giburo^”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)