Where the Hawkins name comes from

Hawkins is an English surname with three possible origins. The most usual is the Middle English personal name Hawkin with a genitive -s added, so that it meant "Hawkin's son". Hawkin joined a short pet name to -kin, a diminutive suffix that came into English from Low German or Dutch, the same pattern that turned Wat into Watkin and Will into Wilkin. Haw was a rhyming fond form of Raw, which is to say Ralph. Hawkin has also been read as a diminutive of Hal, short for Henry.

A second origin is Hawkinge, near Folkestone in Kent, written Hauekinge in 1204 and built on the Old English heafoc, meaning hawk. In Ireland, Hawkins stood in for Ó hEacháin, "descendant of Eachán", a pet form of Eachaidh, meaning horseman, because the two sounded vaguely alike. In Scotland, Hawkins and its variant Howkins are septs of Clan Stewart of Lennox and of Clan Guthrie.