Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from any of the numerous places called Charlton, mainly in southern England, from Old English Ceorlatūn ‘settlement (Old English tūn) of the peasants’. Old English ceorl denoted originally a free peasant of the lowest rank, later (but probably already before the Norman conquest) a tenant in pure villeinage, a serf or bondsman.
- Irish : altered form of Carlin.