Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from any of various places so called, of which there are several in Gloucestershire and one in Dorset. Most take the name from the Frome river (which is probably from a British word meaning ‘fair’, ‘brisk’) + Old English tūn ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’. One near Tewkesbury was originally named in Old English as Frēolingtūn ‘settlement associated with Frēola’, a short form of any of the various compound names with the first element frēo ‘free’. Frampton in Lincolnshire probably gets its name from an Old English byname Frameca (a derivative of fram ‘valiant’) + tūn.