Usually the English or Norman ‘le Whyte’, ‘the fair one’ — though in Gaelic Ireland the same idea was sometimes rendered instead as Bán or Fionn.
Mixed Origin · Root meaning ‘white, fair’
White most often comes from the Anglo-Norman le Whyte, a physical byname for fair hair or complexion, anglicised in Ireland as de Faoite — a family recorded in Limerick and Waterford from the medieval period. Separately, Gaelic families with an equivalent physical byname sometimes had it translated directly into English as White rather than anglicised phonetically, the same treatment Bán and Fionn occasionally received.
A description simple enough that two very different traditions, Norman and Gaelic, independently reached for the same word.
Irish form: de Faoite
