"Our name HOWITT, is the Norman Scots version of HUET - the other versions being HOWAT, HOWIT, HOWET, HOWETT, HOWLET, HOWLETT, HEWET, HEWETT, HEWLET, HEWLETT - depending on the ability of the local dialect to cope with the Norman vowel sounds. HU = woodcutter, and HUET = son of the woodcutter. It is a very common name in Normandy, so you can claim direct descent from the Normans. The chain of events is explained in "Sunset Song", masterpiece of Lewis Grassick Gibbon, real name Leslie Mitchell, who went to the Academy at Stonehaven.
When the Vikings or Norse Men or North Men - they were called several mames - invaded Gaul from Cherbourg to Dieppe they settled and adopted the local language. This was called the Langue d'Oeil, as opposed to the Langue d'Oc which was spoken much further South. As every schoolboy knows, the Langue d'Oeil became the accepted form of French, so the North Men became the Normands.
They conquered the western half of France right down to Aquitaine on the Pyrenees and having no more to conquer in the west , turned north. The Duke of Normandy, one William, invaded England and Wales in 1066.
Normandy was covered (and still is largely) with forrests so they needed a lot of woodcutters. The Norman French word for woodcutter is "Hu" and a son of a woodcutter is called "Huet". If one goes to Normandy and looks in the regional telephone directory you will find that in a hamlet with only about a dozen subscribers there are at least two or three Huets. That it is one of the commonest names in Normandy can be confirmed by reading the gravestones in any churchyard.
Having arrived in England speaking the Normand version of French or rather Langue d'Oeil, which has peculiar vowels and silent letters (like modern English), the locals called them Normans, because the "d"is silent. And as England was covered with forests and thus required many woodcutters, a lot of Huets came with William or soon after. They ran into the vowel problem. Depending on where they settled, they became Hugh, Hewett, or Hewlett, or Howe, Howat, Howett or Howlett, and many other variations of the Langue d'Oeil vowel "u". Those who settled first in what is now Northamptonshire, then moved to Northumbria to the land of the Percys became the Howitts.
The Normans neither invaded nor conquered Scotland, but, as retold in "A Scots Quair", book one, "Sunset Song", they drifted north especially to the land of Buchan, which was then a heavily forested area between the fertile plain on the Moray Firth and the equally fertile plain of the Mearns to the South. Naturally, the woodcutters followed, and that is how the Huets or Howitts arrived in Buchan centuaries ago. When the forests had been cleared, the Howitts remained on the land on the new farms."
Raymond Murray Howitt 1988