Surname Spotlight: Potters

Arms linked to Potter and its spellings were granted to individual families; our heraldry team traces which line they belonged to.

The meaning behind Potters

Your Potters ancestor may well appear as Potter in earlier records. The name is generally explained as “Potter, maker of pots”.

The extra ending in Potters is patronymic: it identified a person as belonging to Potter's family. The same family of names includes Pottere, Poter and Potts. In the 2010 US Census, 226 Americans gave Potters as their last name (rank 83,226). That is enough to place it in the top 100,000 American surnames. Names that sound alike, such as Peters, are easily confused in old records.

For the full story, order the Potters surname pack.