Coulter - Origin & Meaning

There are many sources for the origin and meaning of the name - and contradictions amongst them!

Coulter is almost certainly a surname of Scots origin. If your surname is Coulter you are almost certainly descended from people who would have seen themselves as Scots or Ulster Scots.

The surname is long established and widespread in Scotland and in the Ulster Counties of Down and Antrim and may have locational origin from the parish of Coulter in Lanarkshire. Lanarkshire accounts for just over 50% of all births registered in Scotland with the surname between 1855 and 2011. In his "Descriptions of The Sheriffdoms of Lanark and Renfrew - 1831" William Hamilton describes Coulter as "no great parish" that "belongs almost entirely to Coulterallers, Coultermaynes, and Nisbett who all reside in this parish". Culter Parish Church pictured below is the Chancel burial ground for the Coulterallers and Coulter Mains.

Culter Parish Church, Coulter, Lanarkshire

Some sources also suggest a locational origin from the lands of Coulter in Aberdeenshire, however the incidence of the surname in Aberdeenshire is low with less than 1.8% of all births registered with the surname inn Scotland between 1855 and 2011. The lands of Coulter in Aberdeenshire are so called from the Scots Gaelic elements "cul" meaning back - in the sense of a position and "tir" meaning country, land or territory.

Other sources suggest an origin from the norse Kaldr - a viking name of the 11th Century.

In etymological dictionaries of the English Language a Coulter is part of a plough (the cutting edge) from the Middle English olter, Anlo Saxon culter and Latin culter - meaning a knife. Robert Burns in "To a Mouse. On Turning Her Nest Up With A Plough" refers to the "cruel coulter" crashing through the mouse's nest. 

The first recorded spelling of the name is to be found in Lanarkshire in the year 1226. In the "Report on The Charters of The Duke Of Athole" during the reign of Alexander II  (1214 - 1249) of Scotland there is reference to Richard "of Culter" Sheriff of Lanark.

The surname was most probably introduced into the Ulster Counties of Down and Antrim during the Elizabethan and Cromwellian Plantations of Ireland. The parish and village of Ballyculter in south east County Down is named after people with the surname Coulter or Culter.