Clifton

Clifton began as an English place name describing a settlement near a cliff or slope. Its components are Old English words for cliff and enclosure or town. Several places carry the name, and the surname developed from people’s connections with those locations before it was adopted as a given name.

Cliff is an established short form that keeps the most immediately recognizable part of the meaning. Actor Clifton Webb provides a familiar example of the full name in twentieth-century film. Clifton belongs beside other landscape surnames used as first names, but its specific image is a settlement on elevated or steep ground. It has an independent place-name history rather than being a modern combination of Clifford and Clinton.