Hastings
A surname from the English town of Hastings, ultimately linked to an early landholder or settlement founder named Hæsting.
The #1,253 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 11,021 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname is locational, taken from Hastings in Sussex. Historical writers explain the town name as meaning something like “the fortification of Hæsting” or “Hæsting’s stronghold,” from an early personal name Hæsting plus a word for a fortified place. The family name therefore began as a label for someone who came from that town.
History
Hastings became a surname in England in the usual medieval way: people were identified by their place of origin, and the place-name then passed into hereditary use. The town itself is famous as the chief of the Cinque Ports and for its association with the Norman Conquest. Older scholarship sometimes speculated about whether the place-name Hasting referred to a specific Northman pirate, but that identification is uncertain.
Origin
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Fun fact
The town name is recorded in medieval sources as something like Hestenga-ceastra, which helped etymologists connect the surname to the place rather than to a later family legend.
From the historical record
“ment— quick, imi^ulsive. HASTINGS. That the town of Hastings, CO. Sussex, the chief of the Cinque-Ports, derived its name from one Hasting, is evi- dent from the Bayeux Tapestry, where it i8 styled ITestenga-ceastra, " the fortification of Hasting." Whether he was the well- known Northman pirate is, however, but…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom