WASHINGTON

(origin: Local) Originally Wessyngton or De Wessyngton. The name was taken from the place in England where the family originated; from weis, a wash, a creek setting in from the sea, the shallow part of a river, ing, a meadow or low ground, and ton, for dun, a hill or town--the town on the wash or salt river or creek.

Arthur, William (1857) An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman. Public Domain.

WASHINGTON. Parishes in Durham and Sussex, and a village in Perthshire, are so called. The ancestors of George Washington, the American patriot, are presumed to have been the old gentry stock seated in Northamptonshire, and previously in Lancashire (Shirley's Sicmniata Shirleiana, p. 136.) ; but the county from which the first assumer of the name sprang, is unknown. The followingingenious and almost poetical passage from Mr. Ferguson (pp. 115, 11 G), is worthy of quotation, though the derivation of the heritable surname Washington from an Anglo-Saxon called Wass, and his Wassings, is clearly untenable. The first De Washington — whenever aud wherever he flourished — was more likely a Norman,

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.