When Levi Baylief Knight was born on 16 February 1811, in Calais, Washington, Maine, United States, his father, Thomas Westbrook Knight, was 33 and his mother, Pattie Martha Dyer, was 25. He lived in Chelsea, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States in 1865 and Bangor, Penobscot, Maine, United States in 1870.
English: status or occupational name from Middle English knight ‘retainer, attendant’ (Old English cniht ‘boy, youth, lad)’. The specialized feudal sense ‘a high-ranking tenant bound to serve his lord as a mounted soldier’ is not known to have ever given rise to the surname, although it is not out of the question that it may occasionally have been used as a nickname, perhaps for someone who played the part of an armed knight in a local pageant.
Irish: sometimes adopted for Gaelic Mac an Ridire ‘son of the knight’. See also McKnight .
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