Beeston Family History

English:: habitational name from any of the many places in England so called. Those in Nottinghamshire, Norfolk, and Yorkshire were settlements where bent grass grew (Old English bēos ‘rough grass’ + Old English tūn ‘enclosure, settlement’).

In Bedfordshire it probably denoted a settlement on a bend (Old English byge + genitive singular -es + tūn). The hamlet stands on a marked bend of the river Yvel.

In Cheshire it is named from a rock below which trading took place (Old English byge ‘commerce’ + Old English stān ‘stone’). The reference is to a prominent crag where the remains of Beeston Castle stand.

Compare Beaston and Beeson. Occasionally a topographic name for someone who lived in that part of a village known in Middle English as bi este toun ‘(place) at the east (end) of the village’.