Hamilton
A surname of place origin, most famously linked to the Scottish noble House of Hamilton and originally tied to a place-name in England.
The #119 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 1,530 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Hamilton is generally understood as a locational surname from a place called Hamilton or Hambleton, though 19th-century writers varied on the exact source. The place-name is commonly explained from Old English elements meaning something like 'crooked' or 'crooked hill' plus a word for a settlement, hill, or fortified place, giving the sense of a landscape-based name. Some older authors instead connected it with Hamel/Hamill-style roots and treated the name as a form taken from an estate or manor.
History
The name became especially prominent in Scotland after William, a son of the Earl of Leicester, took it from his place of origin and established the family there in the early 13th century. From that line sprang the later Scottish noble and wider Hamilton families. It is now common in Scotland, England, and the English-speaking world more broadly, and is also a well-established given name.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The House of Hamilton became one of the best-known noble families in Scotland, which helped make the surname unusually visible in British history.
From the historical record
“France. HAMILTON. Originally Hambleton, from the manor of Ham- bleton, in Buckinghamshire. William, third son of Kobert, third Earl of Leicester, took that surname from the place of his birth, as above. He was the founder of the family of that name in Scotland, whither he went about the year 1215. The name is…”
— An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names