Are we _EESE as in GEESE, or _ISS as in KISS?

Did you read any Olde English at school?

Such as this .... a young SQUIER, A lovyere and a lusty bacheler ..... Curteis he was, lovely, and servysable, And carf biforn his fader at the table.

Curteis means Courteous

Those lines were written by Geoffrey Chaucer 1340?-1400, in his famous work "The Canterbury Tales".

The quotation tells us a lot about where our name cam from.  The word "Curteis" is the archaic spelling of the word "courteous" or as it was sometimes written, "curteys".  The word and the name came over with the Norman Invasion in 1066.  It is French in origin.

That's the past.  How about the present?

People today called Curtis, Curtiss, Curtice or Curteis all pronounce the word the same way, regardless of the different spellings.  We all say the name simply as "Curtis".

Why our family kept the original spelling and others moved away from it.  I don't know, except that, until the Education Act in the 1840s, there was no standardised spelling in English.  You could spell your name as you liked.  That's why so many variations in spellings of names came about.

Finally, let us know.  Are we living up to the origin of our name?  Are we Curteis?  I do hope so!

Henry Curteis

P.S  You can read more of The Canterbury Tales HERE