Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from any of the various places called Crofton, for example in Cumbria, Greater London (formerly in Kent), Hampshire, Lincolnshire, Wiltshire, and West Yorkshire. Most of these are named from Old English croft ‘paddock’, ‘vegetable garden’ + tūn ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’, but the one in Greater London probably has as its first element Old English cropp ‘swelling’, ‘mound’ (compare Cropper) and that in Lincolnshire Old English croh ‘saffron’ (from Latin crocus).
- A family called Crofton was established in Ireland by John Crofton (died 1610), who held high office under Elizabeth I and acquired vast estates when he accompanied Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy, into Ireland in 1565.