Croft/Kroft Family Name

Croft Surname Origin

Locality. A town of the same name in England; a small field near a dwelling; an area of land with a crofter's dwelling, used for crofting (small-scale food production).


Croft house

In the Middle Ages, even the literate spelled their names differently as the English language incorporated elements of French, Latin and German languages.

First found in Yorkshire and Herefordshire where they held a family seat from early times.

Last Name Croft
Recorded in many spellings as shown below, Croft is an English surname of pre 6th century origins. These included a nickname surname for a smart, cunning person, deriving from the pre 7th century word "craeft" meaning craft or skill. Secondly it may be topographical for someone who lived by a "croft". This described a piece of enclosed land used for tillage or pasture. Thirdly there are several places in England called Croft and the surname may equally be locational from any of them. As an example Croft village in Leicestershire was recorded as "Craeft" in the Saxon Chartulary of 836 A.D. The word "craeft" means a machine, such as a wind mill or water mill.

The surname is first recorded in the latter half of the 12th Century (see below), and modern spellings include Atcroft, Bycraft, Bycroft, Croft, Crofte, Crofts, Crafts, Cruft and Crufts.
German spellings include Kroft, Kraft, Krafft and Krofft.

Examples of recordings include Roger de Croft in the Curia Regis Rolls of Warwickshire in the year 1213, whilst on February 20th 1557, John Craft, was christened at the church of St. Martin Ludgate, in the city of London.
The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Aluric Craft. This was dated 1185, in the records of the Knight Templars of Essex, during the reign of King Henry II, 1154-1189.
Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was sometimes known as the Poll Tax.
Adam Kraft/Krafft (c. 1460 d. January 1509) was a German stone sculptor and master
builder of the late Gothic period, based in Nuremberg and with a documented career there from 1490. Kraft is believed to have completed all of his sculpting work in Nuremberg and around Bavaria, between the years 1490 and 1509, working with only a small complement of two or three assistants. He is buried in nearby Schwabach.