Marcotte
A French surname most likely connected with a word for a plant layer or shoot used in propagation.
The #5,838 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 52,127 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The name is usually linked to French marcotte, a term for a plant layer or slip used in layering propagation. The excerpted source connects it with a Norman form and traces it back to Latin mergus, referring to a young shoot or offshoot of a tree. In practical terms, the surname likely began as a name for someone associated with gardening, nursery work, or a place or feature linked to such plants.
History
Marcotte is found as a French surname and is also seen in French-speaking North American communities, especially in Quebec and adjacent regions. The name has a clear French lexical background, but the older scholarship in the excerpt suggests some phonetic and dialectal complexity in how the form developed. English-language records in North America often preserve the French spelling unchanged.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
In older French dialect writing, marcotte and related forms could be discussed alongside Norman pronunciation shifts, showing how local speech sometimes shaped surname forms.
From the historical record
“France. —V. Ducange à Margot. * Margotte , marcotte. — * Margottin , petite marcotte. En pat. norm., Ton substitue le gr au c non-seulement dans marcotte, mais encore dans beaucoup d'autres mots, tels que secret j acactcCy écouvillon^ écrouler, etc., qui se prononcent”
— Noms de famille normands