Fenton Family History

English: habitational name from any of various places, in Lincolnshire, Northumberland, Staffordshire, and South Yorkshire, so called from Old English fenn ‘marsh’, ‘fen’ + tun ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’ Irish: English surname adopted by bearers of Gaelic Ó Fionnachta (see Finnerty) or Ó Fiachna ‘descendant of Fiachna’, an old personal name Anglicized as Feighney and sometimes mistranslated as Hunt (see Fee). Jewish (Ashkenazic): Americanized form of various like-sounding names, for example Finkelstein (see Funke).

Source: Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013, Oxford University Press