Jenkinson

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A family name of English origin, borne by people descended from a man called Jenkin or John
2. A surname derived from the medieval given name Jenkin, a diminutive of John, used by many English families
3. An English family name formed from the personal name Jenkin, meaning a son of Jenkin or little John

Etymology: "Jenkinson" is a patronymic surname, meaning "son of Jenkin." Jenkin was a medieval English diminutive of John, formed with the suffix "-kin," so the name is a John-derived family name built from a pet form of a very common given name. The suffix "-son" marks descent from the named father, the same pattern seen in Johnson, Robertson, and Watkinson. Like many English surnames of this type, it arose as a way of distinguishing one man from another in a community: the son of a man called Jenkin became Jenkinson, and the name then passed down to his own children as a hereditary family name. Its spread through English-speaking families followed the same route as thousands of other "-son" names that were fixed in writing from the later Middle Ages onward.