English
The surname Hunte of English Origin.It was an occupational name for a hunter;derived from the Old English 'hunta',derived from 'huntain' to hunt.The term was used not only of hunters on horseback of games such as stags and wild boars,which was in the Middle Ages a pursuit restricted to the ranks of the nobility,but also of much humbler bird catchers and poachers seeking food.A tenth century colloquium was;"One craft I know.Which?'Hunter' I am."The name thus comes to signify a 'huntsman'.The Old English word seems to have been used as a personal name and survived into the Middle Ages as an occasional given name."With hunte and horne,and houndes him beside",an old poem.During the winter months when meat animals could not be kept well,an important source of food was the game killed by the Hunt or Hunter,whose work was both a nescessity and a pasttime for the ruling classes.The British were famed for their hunting dogs.One nobleman in France was said to have had sixteen hundred hounds in his kennels and six hundred horses in his stables.The favourite quarries of the nobility were the stag and the wild boar.The surname dates back to the twelfth century were a Nicholas le Hunte is recorded in historical archives.The name was brought to America by English and Scottish immigrants.One of the first forebears to bring this name to America is that of a Enoch Hunt,of Titenden,who went to Weymouth,Massachusetts,where he was one of the first settlers in about 1630.This name is the one hudredth and thirty-ninth most common surname in America.