Coates (surname)

Coates is an English and Scottish surname.

Origins

One origin is a locational name from any of several places in England, such as Coates in Cambridgeshire or Cotes in Leicestershire. There is also a locational name which was usually given to the lord of the manor at that place or to someone who moved from there to another village. The derivation is from the Old English pre 7th century cot or cote, meaning cottage or shelter.

Alternatively, Coates is a noble family of English and Scottish origin. The surname Coates, which originally is of Norman background, was first found in Staffordshire where the family are "descended from Sir Richard de Cotes, who was probably son of Thomas de Coates, living in 1157, when the Black Book of the Exchequer was compiled. At that time, he held large estates on the Salop, Staffordshire borders."

The name was written in early records as De Cote; the letter "a" occurs in the spelling as early as 1331, when in the fourth year of the reign of Edward III, William De Coates was Lord of Coles De Ville in Leicestershire and in 1347 John De Coates held lands in Lincolnshire. By 1273, the name was scattered throughout England as seen in the Hundredorum Rolls of that year: Egidius de Cotes, Norfolk; Robert de Cotes, Buckinghamshire; and Geoffrey de Cotes, Lincolnshire. Later, the Yorkshire Poll Tax Rolls of 1379 listed Thomas del Cotes; Johannes del Cotes; and Henricus del Cote as holding lands. The first Coates family arrived in Ireland in the early 1700s and bought land in Kildare around Donadea, Kilcock and Ovidstown from the Aylmer family, where they built their family estate at Knockanally.