Holt surname meaning

Holt is an English topographic or habitational surname from Old English holt, “wood” or “grove.” It could identify someone who lived beside a small woodland or someone from one of the many places called Holt. Holte and other spellings occur in older records, but a variant does not establish a single family branch. Place is the high-confidence catalog type because the landscape word and place-name formation are straightforward. The surname points to a wooded setting in the original naming context, not necessarily to a modern forest or to one particular English county.