Nugent
An Irish and English surname ultimately taken from French place-names called Nogent, meaning a pleasant place by wet land or a stream.
The #2,281 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 19,324 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Nugent is a Norman French locational surname from places called Nogent, especially in Normandy and other parts of France. The place-name is commonly explained as combining a word for a wet meadow or marshy streamside ground with an old French element meaning pleasant or fair, so the sense is roughly 'pleasant wet meadow' or 'pleasant place by the water.' In Ireland, the name was later Gaelicized in local usage, and many English bearers are descended from Irish families with the surname.
History
The surname is associated with Norman families who came to England after the Conquest, and with an old noble house connected to the region around Nogent-le-Rotrou. It became well established in Ireland as well, where it was adapted into Irish forms and later returned to English usage in the modern spellings Nugent and Noogent-like variants. The name is especially common in Ireland today, though it also survives in England and North America.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some 19th-century writers described Nogent as a place-name used for several French towns or villages built beside water in a pleasantly situated landscape.
From the historical record
“nucis, a nut (-tree] NUGENT (Fr.) Bel. to Nogent (common in France;=the Fair (Wet) Mead [Fr. noue, a wet meadow; L.Lat. Borfa + O.FT.gent{e, fair; l.a.t.genit-; f.^e«i, a patrician family] Noe est encore usit6 en basse Norman- die avec le sens de petit cours d'eau, petit canal, ruisseau. On dit: une prairie de me…”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)