Family name origins & meanings
- English : from a medieval personal name, a short form of Philpott.
- English : topographic name for someone who lived by a depression in the ground, from Middle English pot ‘drinking or storage vessel’ used in this transferred sense, or a habitational name from one of the minor places deriving their name from this word, in the sense ‘pit’, ‘hole’.
- English and North German (Lower Rhine-Westphalia) : metonymic occupational name for a potter, from Middle English, Middle Low German pot ‘pot’. See also Potter.
- North German : topographic name for someone living on a low-lying plot, from Low German dialect pōt ‘puddle’.