Welton
Masculine · “the settlement by the spring”
A Welton is the farm by the spring, and there are a dozen of them on the English map. The ending is the commonest in the whole of English place naming — it closes something like a fifth of all English settlement names — and the front is a word for water coming out of the ground.
How old is the name Welton?
Welton first appears in US birth records in 1893 — 132 years ago. The typical Welton alive today was born around 1939, making them about 86 years old. About 1,000 people named Welton are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Welton most popular?
Welton peaked in 1904, reaching #810 nationally. See the whole 1904 chart.
Where it comes from
From wella tun to Welton
The story of Welton
The tun ending is everywhere: Brighton, Preston, Boston, Charlton, Milton, Hamilton, and thousands of smaller places nobody outside the county has heard of. It originally meant a fenced enclosure and then a farm and then a village, and by the time English stopped making new place names it had become simply the word for a settlement — which is where the modern word town comes from. Names built on it are therefore almost always old, and they name real ground. Welton crossed to America as a surname and moved to the front of the name in the nineteenth century.
Meaning
the settlement by the spring
Old English wella, a spring or well, and tun, an enclosure or farmstead. Both are among the most productive elements in English place names and neither is in any doubt.
How the name formed
- wella tun
- Welton
Pronouncing Welton
WEL-tun
Two syllables with the weight at the front, the second reduced to a hum. Both halves are ordinary English words.
Nicknames for Welton
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1893
- Most boys named
- 192362 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #810reached in 1904
- Change vs 2008
- +33.3%8 in 2015, from 6
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Weltons among us
people named Welton are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Welton sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- Both halves are readable, so the name is said correctly at sight.
- It works as a surname and as a first name, which suits families that use both.
- The meaning is concrete and can be pointed at on a map.
- Welton, Weldon and Walton are near neighbors and will be confused.
- It sits inside a very large set of similar place names and does not stand out.
- It reads clearly as a name of the turn of the twentieth century.
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Welton
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Weltons are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,000 people named Welton are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Welton in 2025?
- Welton is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Welton with classmates?
- Welton will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More W names
The most-given names starting with W, all years combined.
William#9 · Walter#251 · Willie#1315 · Wayne#652 · Wesley#52 · Wyatt#38 · Warren#240 · Wallace#960
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Welton? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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