WADE HAMPTON

Transferred use of the surname, in origin either a local name from the medieval vocabulary word wade ‘ford’ (old English (ge)wæd), or else from a medieval given name representing a survival of Old English Wada, a derivative of wadan ‘to go’, borne, according to legend, by a great sea-giant.

English and Scottish: habitational name from any of the numerous places called Hampton, including the cities of Southampton and Northampton (both of which were originally simply Hamtun). These all share the final Old English element tūn ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’, but the first is variously hām ‘homestead’, hamm ‘water meadow’, or hēan, weak dative case (originally used after a preposition and article) of hēah ‘high’. This name is also established in Ireland, having first been taken there in the medieval period.