Smit Surname: Origin, Meaning & Coat of Arms

Spellings drift, and Smit is where Smith drifted for some families. The name is usually explained as “Metalworker (Old English smið)”.

Arms associated with the name

Arms linked to Smith and its spellings were granted to individual families; our heraldry team traces which line they belonged to.

How the spelling arose

Smit drops the “h” of Smith, a shortening that clerks often made. Regional accents shaped spellings long before dictionaries fixed them.

French birth records list 192 children named Smit between 1891 and 2000. In the Spanish register, Smit appears 267 times as a first surname and 67 times as a second one. Each Spaniard has two surnames, so the same name is counted once as first and once as second surname. Want more than a summary? See the Smit family name pack.