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English: status or occupational name from Middle English knight ‘retainer attendant’ (Old English cniht ‘boy youth lad)’. The specialized feudal sense ‘a high-ranking tenant bound to serve his lord as a mounted soldier’ is not known to have ever given rise to the surname although it is not out of the question that it may occasionally have been used as a nickname perhaps for someone who played the part of an armed knight in a local pageant. Irish: sometimes adopted for Gaelic Mac an Ridire ‘son of the knight’. See also McKnight .
Source: Dictionary of American Family Names 2nd edition, 2022