Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from any of various places so called. Most of them, including those in Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Somerset (Winford), are named from Old English feld ‘pasture’, ‘open country’ + tūn ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’. Another place of the same name in Somerset, also known as Whitchurch, has as its first element Old English fileðe ‘hay’. Felton Hill in Northumberland is named with the Old English personal name Fygla (a derivative of fugol ‘bird’; compare Fowle).