Winthrop

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A family name borne by notable figures such, as the Puritan governor of colonial Massachusetts ; a coastal town in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, on Boston Harbor
2. An English surname associated with a 17th-century colonial governor ; a seaside community in eastern Massachusetts located north of Boston
3. A surname linked to an early Puritan leader of New England ; a small residential town in Massachusetts sitting on a peninsula near Boston

Etymology: Winthrop is a place-name and surname built from two Old English elements. The first, "wines," meant "friend's" in the sense of a friend or kinsman, and the second, "þorp," meant "village" or "settlement." Together they gave a sense of "friend's village," the kind of name that marked a settlement belonging to a particular person. The name came to prominence in New England through John Winthrop, the English Puritan lawyer who led the Massachusetts Bay Colony and served repeatedly as its governor. His family name, rooted in that old settlement name, was carried across the Atlantic and attached to the places that later honoured him, most notably the town on the coast north of Boston.