Swinson
An English surname that usually means “Sweyn’s son” or “Swain’s son,” with Swain as a medieval personal name.
The #8,681 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 81,592 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname is generally treated as a contraction of Swainson, meaning “son of Swain.” The personal name Swain comes from Old Norse Sveinn, a common medieval name meaning “boy,” “servant,” or “young man,” and in English it was also influenced by the Old English word swain in the same general sense. Some older writers also linked the name to the form Sweyn, which is another spelling tradition behind the same family of names.
History
Nineteenth-century surname dictionaries regularly cross-reference Swinson with Swainson and related forms such as Swaine, Sweyne, and Swanson. The name is most at home in England and Scotland, where patronymic surnames built from medieval forenames became fixed hereditary surnames over time. The Swinton/Swinton-related entries in older works are separate locative names, so Swinson is usually not explained as a place-name surname.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Older surname compilers often grouped Swinson with a whole cluster of “Swain/Sweyn” surnames, showing how fluid spelling and pronunciation could be before standardization.
From the historical record
“ford. SWINSON. A contraction of Swain-- son. SWINTON. 1. Two townships and a chapelry in Yorkshh-e. 2. The Swintons of Swinton Bank, co. Peebles, derive their origin from the Ijarony of Swinton in Ber- wickshire, and from a Saxon proprietor called Edulphus dc Swinton, who flourished in the reigns of Macbeth and…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom