Knight
Servant of the knight — not the knight himself.
CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Knight
Seat vacantChief
No chief yet. The seat awaits its first claimant — be the first to stake your name to Knight.
Current mission
No mission proclaimed. The chief, once seated, sets the clan’s public focus — a campaign, a contest, a piece of restoration, a year of remembrance.
The pledge surface for chiefdoms and missions is being built. Until it ships, register your name through the submit form.
Stake your name →What does the Knight name mean?
From Old English cniht — originally a youth or servant, evolving in late Old English to a military servant and by the 12th century to the technical term for a mounted feudal warrior. As a surname it usually denotes service in a knight's household rather than knighthood itself — the Knight of the surname is a household servant, not a belted knight. The base sense of cniht as 'youth' survives in modern German Knecht ('servant').
The history of Knight
Knight is among the top-50 English surnames, with broad distribution across the southern counties and the Home Counties. The mediaeval knightly system created two classes of bearer — those few who held knight's-fees and the many more who served in their households — and it was the latter, by far the more numerous, who took the surname. The household-servant origin is consistent with the modern surname's distribution, which is densest in the corn-belt counties of southern England rather than the knightly castles of the marcher north.
Phil Knight (b. 1938), the Oregon-born co-founder of Nike Inc. with Bill Bowerman in 1964, has been at various points the wealthiest American sportsperson outside professional sport. Gladys Knight (b. 1944), the Atlanta-born singer, led Gladys Knight & the Pips from the late 1950s through three decades of soul and R&B classics. Wayne Knight (b. 1955), the New York actor, played Newman on Seinfeld for nine seasons.
Notable bearers of the Knight name
- Phil Knight (b. 1938) — co-founder of Nike
- Gladys Knight (b. 1944) — singer
- Wayne Knight (b. 1955) — actor (Seinfeld)