Hinton
A habitational surname from places called Hinton, meaning “high town” or “farmstead on the hill.”
The #979 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 8,671 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Hinton is a place-name surname taken from one of many English villages called Hinton. The name usually comes from Old English hīeh or hēan/hing?—more securely from hēah “high” plus tūn “farmstead, enclosure, settlement,” giving the sense “high town” or “settlement on higher ground.” In some cases the place-name may have been influenced by later spelling changes, but the basic meaning is locational and topographic.
History
The surname appears widely in medieval and later records because there are many places named Hinton across England. People who moved from those villages were often identified by the place-name, and the surname then spread into a broad English and later colonial surname. Nineteenth-century surname writers explicitly treated it as a local surname from parishes and places in several counties.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
There are numerous English place-names Hinton, which is one reason the surname became fairly widespread rather than tied to a single family line.
From the historical record
“of Henchman. HINTON. Parishes and places in cos. Salop, Hants, Somerset, Wilts, Gloucester, Northampton, Dorset, Berks, &c. HIPKIN. See Hipp. HIPP. An old Scandinavian name, whence Hipson, Hipkin, and the local Plippisley, Hipswell, &c. HIPPER. The Hypper or Ibber is a river of Derbyshire, a tributary of the”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United KingdomNotable people named Hinton
- Geoffrey Hinton (b. 1947)
Sourced from Wikidata; linked to their Wikipedia page.