Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from any of various places called Houghton. Nearly all, including those in Cheshire, County Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Shropshire, and Staffordshire, are named from Old English halh ‘nook’, ‘recess’ + tūn ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’; however, in the case of one in Nottinghamshire, the first element is Old English hōh ‘spur of a hill’ (literally ‘heel’).
- Irish : in many cases of English origin, but in some a shortened Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó hEacháin (see Haughn) or (in County Tipperary) of Ó hEachtair ‘descendant of Eachtair’, probably a Gaelic form of the personal name Hector.