Where the Washington name comes from

Washington is a habitational surname from the town of that name in Tyne and Wear, in the northeast of England. The place name probably comes from the Old English Hwæssingatūn, meaning a settlement of the household of Hwæssa, a Saxon chieftain. Hwæssa itself is of uncertain origin, and has been linked either to waþ, meaning hunt, joined with sige, meaning victory, or to hwæte, meaning wheat. The town was recorded in 1096 as Wasindone.

The word became a surname in 1183, when William de Hertburn took the name William de Wassyngtona. The name reached Virginia in 1657, and the ancestors of George Washington are said to have come from the Tyne and Wear town. Washington later spread as a given name, drawn from the surname and especially popular in the United States and South America.