Ancestral Origins

Surname Meanings

Heyd/Heydt/Heid

A topographic name referring to one who lived on open uncultivated land, similar in meaning to the English surname Heath.

Haight/Height

A topographic name for someone who lived at the top of a hill.

Hoyt

“Long stick” - referring to a tall person.

Hyde/Hide

Habitational name from various places so called in reference to a “hide” of land, a variable measure of land fixed as the amount necessary to support one extended family.

Hite

This surname was found mostly in Virginia and Pennsylvania prior to the 19th century. After that time, it began spreading elsewhere. The family of the prominent Virginia settler, Jost Hite (originally Hans Justus Heyd) appears to have been the first to use it after arriving in Virginia in the early 1730s. Other Germans with the Heyd surname who moved into Virgina, though not related to Jost, also picked up that spelling, as did some English families. The Hite spelling was also used by some German families named Heyd who lived in Pennsylvania, although the spellings there varied more widely and the German spellings more often survived in that colony.

Since 2002, the Hite Family Association has been participating in a Y-Chromosome DNA project, hosted by the Houston-based company Family Tree DNA (www.familytreeDNA.com). This has helped to sort out who is related to who among various Hite families. No two family groups listed here are known to be related to each other and in many cases, it has been proven by DNA testing that certain family groups do not share male-line ancestors – the fact that they have the same surname is just coincidental. Within some family groups, the specific relationships among the people mentioned is not certain, but the Y-DNA test results have proven that they do have a male-line ancestor in common.

The surname Hite seems to have originated in the American colonies primarily as an anglicized spelling of the German surname Heyd (also spelled Heydt, Heid, Heidt, Hayd, Haydt, Heit, Heyt, or Heytt). Heidt is the most common spelling of that surname in Germany today. Some American Hite families, however, are descendants of English ancestors who may have had any of three surnames – Haight, Hoyt, or Hyde/Hide. All of these names have, in some cases, also evolved into Hight.