A male name. compound of Old English cuth ‘famous’, beorht ‘bright’, a common Old English personal name, which survived the Norman Conquest, as being the name of St Cuthbert (d. 687), Bishop of Lindisfarne, whose body, preserved in Durham Cathedral, was said to work many miracles. There are 72 church dedications to him, mostly in the North of England, where the name has chiefly flourished. It sometimes appears as Cudbert, and the pet-form Cuddy was formerly current and may have been the origin of the Scottish and Northern cuddy an ass. Cuthbert lingered on in Yorkshire and Durham, chiefly among Roman recusants, after the Reformation, but went out of general use until it was revived by the Tractarians in the 19th C. During the War of 1914-18 Cuthbert was used as a slang term for an evader of military service, and it seems now to have gone out of fashion as a christian name.

Cudbright Hundred Rolls 1273. Cuthbrid Poll Tax of West Riding of Yorkshire 1379 1379 Cudbert Early S. English Legendary, 14th C (E.E.T.S. 87). Cuthbert Lincoln Diocese Documents (E.E.T.S. 149) 1533, The Coventry Leet Book 1530. Cuddie, Cuddy Westmorland 1587.

A. -S. Cuthbryth, ‘famous splendour.’ It was St. Cuthbert (d. 687) who, from a shepherd lad becoming a saintly bishop, invested the name with reverential glamour. Despite its essential Anglo-Saxonism, it is now, among the lower orders (and others), a name of derisive‘connotation (in which respect cf. Algernon, Clarence, Harold, Percy); ‘the comic sense of this name apparently dates from a pre-War music-hall song describing the adventures of three gilded youths, “Cuthbert, Clarence and Claude”’ (Weekley, W. & N.).

From the Anglo Saxon cuth-bert, known, famous.

Teutonic (masculine) - Eminent for wisdom.

A Teutonic name, meaning: Brilliant wisdom.