In the course of searching for the origin of the surnae SCOATES I contacted Cecil Humphrey-Smith F.S.A. of the Institute Of Heraldic & Genealogical Studies, the following was his findings.
In a dictionary of Kentish dialects the word schoat (otherwise scout or shoat means a kneading-trough.
This may be an unlikely source for a surname but on the other-hand it maybe that the name derives from a son of one who made kneading-troughs for bakers and is an occupational surname.
As you are probably aware,it is a name in its present form of SCOATES which is localised to the THANET/DOVER part of Kent with all references in the 1600`s being to the Island of Thanet. There are a few eighteenth century Sussex entries also, which may have arisen from the migration of fishing folk.
In the late sixteenth century quite a significant proportion of the population of East Kent was of Walloon origin,especially centred upon Canterbury and Sandwich. It is of course possible that the surname SCOATES is derived from a Walloon name by some form of corruption.
The terminal `e`, or `er` usually indicates an occupational surname and Basil Cottle has SCOOTS as an occupational surname.He puts a question mark after word occupational? He suggests that the name means "son of the scout/spy" from the old French.The query suggests that he has not too much confidence in his derivation.
In Bosmans`s "Armorial de la Belgique" there are Schats in Brabant; Schets in Antwerp; Schotte in Brabant and Flanders; Schouters in Flanders; Schut in Antwerp; Shutz in Brabant and also Schouten.
I have looked very carefully at such sources as Doctor J Wright`s English Dialect Dictionary,Volume V, the definitive work on the subject and he does have such words as scot,scoot,scote.He uses the word in the sense of scout or guillemot and as a squirting of water.The latter derivation suggests a playing with water, a mischievous boy; or also a lazy idle wanderer.
The word nearest to the spelling of the surname SCHOAT gives rise to a slip or a drag on a wheel and presumably therefore to maker of such a drag or slip (such as a metal brake for carts in the days when they were drawn by horses).
The obsolete Scottish scuit giving rise to skutie refers to a wooden drinking vessel and therefore also probably to one who made such vessels.In the sense of scot meaning a corner or promontory of land it is also used for a northerner or one from foreign parts, in the sense of remote, in the corner.
You will recognise of course that surnames as spelt today derived from how they were pronounced.
Since the earliest Parochial Register evidence does not produce the name untill the end of the seventeenth century in Thanet, I am rather of the opinion that the name could have come into this country from abroad (probably the Netherlands) and it is to that area that we might well look for any remoter origins, unless we believe in the kneading-trough.
The Flemish and brabant surname SCHOTTE is definitely pronounced as Shoet-ter, just as Scoates might have been before the addition of the `s`.
