Lamont

Lamont comes from a Scottish surname whose history reaches back through Gaelic Lagmann to an Old Norse expression meaning law man. The original name was connected with someone knowledgeable about law. This route explains the surname more accurately than interpreting its final syllable as the French word for mountain.

In American first-name use, Lamont is familiar through Lamont Sanford, the son in the television comedy Sanford and Son. That screen association is much newer than the surname's Scottish and Norse background. For a family choosing Lamont, the name can preserve an ancestral surname, recall a personally meaningful bearer, or offer a link with the older language of law and judgment.