Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from any of various places called Whiston. Examples in Merseyside (formerly in Lancashire) and South Yorkshire are named from Old English hwīt ‘white’ + stān ‘stone’, while one in Staffordshire is from the genitive case of an unattested Old English personal name Witi meaning ‘white’ + Old English tūn ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’. Another place of the same name, in Northamptonshire, was probably named as the settlement associated with the Hwicce, the name of an Old English tribe.