Last Name Meaning and Origin of Shoemate

Last Name Meaning and Origin of Shoemate: "Americanized form of southern French De la Chaumette, a topographic name for someone who lived on a chaumette, a high, arid plateau with very little vegetation, derived from a diminutive of chaume 'bare land' (a specialized sense of Latin calmus 'calm', 'unruffled').
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4"

I have also heard it mean "straw mountain" which I like somewhat better...