This surname is derived from the name of an ancestor. 'the son of Bertin.' St. Bertin of France made the font-name familiar in that country, and as a French surname it occurs in the Lon. Directory We must ascribe the English surname to the same source, although there seems strong evidence in favour of its being a pet form of Bertram, nick. Bert, diminutive Bert in. The early Bertie was evidently a popular form of Bertin.

Bertin de Boyuill, Close Rolls Henry III.

1541. Bertyn Flecchar, Bury, Lancashire: Rec. Soc. Lancashire, and Cheshire.

Berton Venator, Gloucestershire, 1273. Hundred Rolls.

Bartin de Verdun, 1432: Historiae Dunelmensis (Surt. Soc.).

Bertram de Burgo, Staffordshire, 1273. Hundred Rolls.

Bertin de Burgo, Salop, ibid.

Bertram and Bertin are probably one and the same individual.

Betty Fleschar, Northumberland, 1541. The History of Liddesdale and the Debatable Land.

Compare this also with Bertyn Flecchar, above recorded, same date.

1578-9. William Dadeand Lucy Bertie: Marriage Lic. (London).

1691. Isaie Dupre and Ann Bertin: Marriage Alleg. (Canterbury).

A diminutive of (1) Albert, which see, (2) Bertram, which see. James Bertie in Charletown, 1735 (Brechin). As forename: Berte Fala in Kelso, 1567 (Kelso, p. 526).

“Helto Bertin was bailiff of Falaise in Normandy, about 1195. In 1165 Alexander de Bertona held lands in Kent (Lib. Niger), and the family was seated at Berstead, in that county, temp. Hen. II., and sometimes bore the name of De Berstead—(Ibid.). Walter de Berstede, 1257, was Viscount of Kent (Roberts, Excerpta), and in 1266 was a justiciary. In 1433 William Bertin was one of the Kentish gentry; and Simon Bertyn, who died 1530, devised lands at Bersted. Another branch, seated at Bersted also, altered the name to Berty or Bertie. Thomas Bertie, of this line was Captain of Hurst Castle, temp. Hen. VIII., and from him descended the Dukes of Ancaster, Earls of Lindsay, and Earls of Abingdon.”—The Norman People. This derivation has at least the merit of verisimilitude, entirely wanting in the astonishing genealogy given in the Peerages, which declares that the Berties “first landed in England in company with the Saxons,” and “descended from a family of free barons of Bertisland in Prussia.” “For some centuries past a Freiherr von Bertisland would not be an impossible being: but in what age of the world would any one guess that these free barons lived who were the forefathers of the Berties of Kent? Unhappily from the fifth century to the eleventh, we have no mention of this remarkable stock; but in the time of Æthelred, by some astounding fore­stalling of language, fortification, and everything else, Leopold Bertie was not only Constable of Dover Castle, but had a private castle at ‘Bertie-sted, now Bersted.’ (The old form of Bersted happens to be Berhamstede).” This Leopold has a quarrel about tithes with the monks of Canterbury; a fray ensues, in which his son is slain: “the King gives Leopold no satisfaction:” and he induces Sweyn of Denmark to invade England: “then the Danes join Leopold’s forces in Kent;” the siege of Canterbury and the captivity of Alfheah are the result. “Burbach Bertin, the only surviving son, flees to France:” but a descendant comes back in the twelfth century and recovers Bersted. To crown all, in the time of Henry V. “Hieronimus Bertie” is excommunicated for trying to kill a monk for “assertions injurious to his ancestor Leopold.” “On the whole,” concludes Mr. Freeman, “this is perhaps the most monstrous of all our fictions.”

A very pretty tradition brings the Berties, at the time of the Saxon invasion, from Bertiland, in Prussia, to Bertiestad, now Bersted, in Kent, where "one of our Saxon monarchs gave him a castle and town I" A Cottonian MS. makes one Leopold de Bertie (I) constable of Dover Castle in the time of King Ethelred, but his son of the same name, being out of favour at court, retired to France. From that country in the year 1154 his descendant came to England with Henry II., who restored to him his ancestral estate at Bersted. See Burke's Ext. Peerage.

A Norman name: Domesday Book de Bertone. St. Bertin; a local name

Bertin: not in Domesday or Wace. Not heard of till the second half of the twelfth century. An interpolation.