Port Family History

English: from Middle English port(e) ‘gateway entrance’ (Old French porte from Latin porta), hence a topographic name for someone who lived near the gates of a fortified town or city or for the gatekeeper. Compare Porter.

English: topographic name for someone who lived near a harbor or in a market town from a homonymous Middle English port(e) (Old English port ‘harbor market town’ from Latin portus ‘harbor haven’, reinforced in Middle English by Old French port from the same source).

English (of Norman origin): habitational name from Port-en-Bessin (Calvados), which is recorded as Portu in 1035–36. The placename derives from Latin portus ‘port harbour haven’.

German: topographic name for someone who lived near a (city) gate from Middle Low German porte (modern German Pforte) (see 1 above).

French (mainly Lorraine): habitational name from a place named Port e.g. in Meurthe-et-Moselle. Jewish (from Lithuania and Belarus): metonymic occupational from Belorussian port ‘thread of hemp or flax’; ‘kind of cloth shawl’.