Flatt
Usually a locational surname for someone who lived by a flat or level piece of ground.
The #6,664 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 60,921 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Flatt is most plausibly from Middle English plat or flat, meaning a flat, level place or a small patch of ground. In surname use, it would have described someone who lived "at the flat" or near a level tract of land. The name may also reflect the older sense of "plat" as a piece of ground rather than the modern adjective alone.
History
The name is recorded in English sources as a local or topographic surname, especially in eastern England; one 19th-century source specifically associates it with Norfolk. It remains comparatively uncommon, but the spelling has been stable enough to survive into modern census records. Similar forms such as Flatley and Flatman show how the same root generated several related surnames.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Older surname dictionaries connect Flatt with the same word family that gave English the noun plat, meaning a plot or patch of ground.
From the historical record
“Marr, pi. iu Flatt, Platta.— Local, ■ of the plat,* i.e. a small patch of ground, the same as pbt ; v. Skeat, who adds that ' the spelling is probably due to M.E. plat, Fr. />lal, flat,' whence our plate, a llat disb.”
— A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, with special American instances