This name, with variant spellings Cockshot, Cockshoot, Cockut and Cockshutt, is of English locational origin from Cockshoot Farm in Worcestershire, Cockshot in Kent or Cockshut in Lancashire. The name derives from the Olde English pre 7th Century "coccscyte" translating as "a place where nets were streched to catch woodcock" and was originally given to an inhabitant of one of these places or as a topographic name to someone who lived near such a trap. The surname is first recorded in the latter half of the 13th Century, (see below). One, John Cokschote appears in the 1312 "Court Rolls of the Borough of Colchester" and an Alice atte Cocshete in the 1327 "Subsidy Rolls of Sussex". The name appears as Cocke Shoute in the 1562 "Catalogue of Ancient Deeds", Berkshire. In 1662 Edmund Cockshott was recorded in "The Preston Guild Rolls of Lancashire". The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Syman de Cokshute, which was dated 1296, in the "Subsidy Rolls of Sussex", during the reign of King Edward 1, known as "The Hammer of The Scots", 1272 - 1307. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.