Porteous Family History

English and Scottish: nickname from Middle English and Older Scots port(e)hors, portas, porte(i)s, portos, portus, porthous, porteus, portewas ‘portable breviary prayer book’. It is a borrowing of Old French porte-hors, Anglo-Norman French porteose, porteho(r)s, port(h)eus, literally something ‘carried out of doors’.

The surname may have been given to someone who habitually carried such a book, or for a scribe employed to write them. In modern times it is chiefly a Scottish surname, which probably accounts for its presence in northern England.

However, the name is also well evidenced in southeastern England in the medieval period and in northern Lincolnshire since the 17th century. The Scottish surname became established in Ireland by the mid 16th century.