Wentworth

(male) Transferred use of the surname, in origin a local name from places in Cambridgeshire and South Yorkshire. These were named with Old English winter ‘winter’ and worð ‘enclosure’ the reference was to settlements that were inhabited only in winter, the inhabitants taking their flocks to other pastures in summer. In Australia it probably came into use as a given name in honour of D'Arcy Wentworth (?1762–1827), who was born in Ireland and played an important role in the early days of the Botany Bay settlement, and his son William Wentworth (1790–1872), an explorer and politician known as ‘the Australian patriot’ because of his advocacy of self-government.