Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from a place so called, probably either the one in Oxfordshire, which is named from Old English hēan, the weak dative case of hēah ‘high’ (originally used after a preposition and article), + Old English tūn ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’, or the one in Somerset, which is from Old English henn ‘hen’ (perhaps a byname) + tūn. The surname, however, is now most common in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, and could be a variant of Hinton.