Knight
Servant of the knight, not the knight himself.
- Origin
- South East, England
- Famous bearer
- Phil Knight (b. 1938), co-founder of Nike
- Register
- English family
CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Knight
Seat vacantChief
No one leads the Knight community yet. When the movement opens, you can stand for its leadership, or help elect whoever does.
Current mission
No shared goal set yet. Once Knight has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.
The Knight clan is being rebuilt. Join the waiting list for the movement today, and you help decide who leads it and what it does.
Help rebuild the Knight clan →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.
Champions of the Knight name
The bearers whose lives are inseparable from this surname. Each has its own page — biography, achievements, geography, connection to the family.
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)