Taft

Boy name variations

Family name origins & meanings

• English : topographic name or habitational name from a dialect variant of Old and Middle English toft ‘curtilage’, ‘site’, ‘homestead’, also applied to a low hillock where a homestead used to be. Compare Toft.
• Robert Taft (b. about 1640), lived in Braintree, MA, and subsequently Mendon, MA. Alphonso Taft (1810–91), jurist and politician born in Townshend, VT, was the father of William Howard Taft (1857–1930), 27th president of the U.S. and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.