5,108 Global PICTON Family Members

PICTON Family History

This famous surname is English. It is locational from the places called "Picton," being a parish and hamlet near Chester in Cheshire, and a parish near Yarm in North Yorkshire. The placename is composed of the Old English pre 7th Century elements "pic", meaning point or peak a common placename element, or possibly "pica" a word meaning elf or goblin and sometimes used as a personal name, and "tun", an enclosure or settlement, which is also found in many placenames. In the Middle Ages, when migration for the purpose of job seeking was becoming more common, people often took their former village name as a means of identification, hence placenames became a main influence in surname formation.