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White could owe his name from an ancestor bearing the Old English name Hwita, from hwit or white, or be a nickname for someone with white hair or an unnaturally pale complexion.  The German Weiss has a similar origin, as does the Dutch Witt or de Witt. 

White in Wales probably came from the Welsh gwyn or wynne meaning "white" (although Gwyn and Gwynne have also flourished as surnames, as with Charles II's mistress Nell Gwynne).  The White name in Scotland and Ireland, if not an implant, would have displaced the Gaelic ban or fionn, meaning "white" or "fair."  Many of the French Huguenots fleeing France for England in the 17th century changed their names from Blanc to White.

Other suggestions for the origin of the White name have been:

• from the Anglo-Saxon wiht, meaning "valiant," which gave rise to both the White and Wight names
• from atte wyte, one who lived by a bend in the river
• or from Wait or White, a place name in Devon.
  

Select White Resources on The Internet

• What's in Your Name? - White  History of the White name. 
• White Family History  Whites from Aston Rowant in Buckinghamshire. 
• The Whites of Stretton Fosse  Whites in Warwickshire. 
• The White Family of Gloucestershire  Whites from Dursley in Gloucestershire.
  
• Descendants of Adam White  Whites from Scotland to Ireland and America.
• The White Family Page  Whites in Virginia and the south.
  
• White Family Recorder.  White newsletters of Violet White Smith of Chicago.

England.  White appeared as a name in pre-1066 documents, possibly to describe the pale Saxons or Vikings in contrast to the darker original Celts.  Walter White, knighted by Henry II in 1171, was the first known bearer of this name as a surname in England.  His descendants have been traced to various counties.

The Whites of London were early cloth merchants, most notably Sir Thomas White who was Lord Mayor of London in 1553.  He was a principal member of the guild of merchant taylors and helped found the Merchant Taylors' School in London.  The White landowners of Nottinghamshire had come originally from Suffolk. Thomas White held Tuxford Manor in Elizabethan times and his descendant Thomas married the Wallingwells heiress a century or so later.

Scotland.  The spelling here could be either White or Whyte.  The earliest reference - an Uwiaett Hwite in Coldringham, Berwickshire in 1097 - may have been English.  But White was also a semi-translation of the Highland Gaelic Mac Ghille Bhain, "son of the fair-haired servant or youth."  White was adopted as a name by many of the MacGregors and Lamonts when they were outlawed and their own names proscribed.  It became, however, mainly a Lowland name.

Ireland.  White came to Ireland in 1170 with William Whyte who was part of Strongbow's invasion force and then began to appear in the lists of mayors and sheriffs in county Limerick.  The name spread to Down, Kildare and Sligo.  Some Whites in Ireland were later English or Scottish arrivals.

America.  The White name figured prominently in the early English settlement of America.  John White, a Puritan preacher in Dorchester, was the founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony which sent the first large party of English people to settle in New England in 1630. 

He himself never sailed to America.  But other Whites did.  William White was a passenger on the Mayflower who died during the first winter.  But his son Peregrine, who was the first English child born to the Pilgrims in the New World, did survive.  Meanwhile, John White from Somerset, possibly related, arrived in 1638 and settled in Salem, Massachusetts.

John White of Dorchester was the founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony which sent the Pilgrims to America.
James and Ellen White were the co-founders of the Seventh day Adventist Church in the 1840's.
Stanford White was a well-known American architect, sensationally murdered in 1906.
Harry Dexter White was an economist and Treasury official who was the prime mover behind the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement.