Family name origins & meanings
- French : topographic name for someone who lived in or near a royal forest, or a metonymic occupational name for a keeper or worker in one, from Old French forest, with the definite article la. Unlike modern French forêt, forest was not simply a word for extensive woodland, but referred specifically to large, partly or mainly wooded areas reserved by law for the king and his nobles to hunt in.
- Americanized form of French La Forêt, a modern spelling of 1, here translated into English with the article left intact. Compare Lafontaine.