Stutts
An English surname likely linked to cloth-making or the sale of woollen goods.
The #9,209 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 87,192 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The available evidence points to an occupational name connected with cloth. The excerpt from Bardsley ties it to a "chaloner"—someone who made or sold chalons, a kind of woollen covering such as a blanket or coverlet—and the word appears in forms associated with textile trade vocabulary. The surname may therefore have arisen as a nickname or trade-based name for someone dealing in such goods, though the exact path from the common noun to the surname form is not fully certain.
History
As with many English occupational surnames, this kind of name could become hereditary when a family kept the trade name after the original bearer’s occupation changed. The modern spelling Stutts is likely a later spelling development from an older dialect or pluralized form. In the United States, the name is now found mainly as a fairly uncommon surname.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Bardsley connects the underlying word to textile terms for woollen coverlets and blankets, showing how many surnames preserve vanished everyday trades.
From the historical record
“Occup. 'the chaloner,' a manu- faclurer or seller o!chohn3, woollen stutTs, especially coverlets or blan- kets. The term still remains in York- shire in the word shalloon (with”
— A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, with special American instances