Templeton
A habitational surname meaning “someone from Templeton,” originally a place-name built from “temple” + “town.”
The #2,687 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 23,048 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Templeton is a habitational surname from several English place-names called Templeton, most famously the one in Devon. The name is built from Middle English temple, from Latin templum, plus Old English tun, meaning an enclosure, estate, or settlement, so the literal sense is roughly “temple village” or “temple town.” In some cases the place-name may also have referred to land associated with the Knights Templar or with an earlier religious site, though the exact local history can vary.
History
The surname appears in English records as a local name for people who came from Templeton, rather than as an occupational or descriptive byname. Nineteenth-century surname writers consistently treated it as a place-based name, and Harrison explicitly glossed it as “the Temple-Town.” It is also found in Scotland and Ireland as a surname carried by families of English place-name origin or by later migration.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
One of the best-known English Templeton place-names is in Devon, noted by early surname scholars as the source of the family name.
From the historical record
“'Wm&mTevap\e:T.— Hund. Rolls. TEMPLETON (A.-Lat. -f- E.) Bel. to Temple- ton =x= the Temple-Town [v. under Temple, and + M.E. -ton, tun, O.E. tUn, estate, village, etc.J Tench 213”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)