Upton

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A place name borne by several small villages and parishes in England, often used as a surname as well
2. The name of a number of English villages, and occasionally a family surname in the English-speaking world
3. A geographical name shared by multiple rural settlements in England, sometimes found as a family name

Etymology: "Upton" is a place name rather than a common word, and it was built in Old English from two plain elements: "upp", meaning "up", and "tūn", which meant an enclosure and then, more widely, a settlement or town. Put together, the name describes a farmstead or village set on higher ground than something nearby, the sort of descriptive label that Anglo-Saxon settlers gave countless places. The second element is the more revealing one. "Tūn" originally referred to a fenced or hedged enclosure, and it is the ancestor of the modern "town". Over time its meaning widened from a walled yard to a farm and then to a settlement, so the same root that once marked a paddock eventually named whole communities. Many English place names ending in "-ton" carry this same sense of a settled, enclosed spot.