From Old Provençal 'astor' meaning 'hawk'; became a prestigious surname via the Astor dynasty.
The name Astor most likely derives from the Old Occitan word astor, meaning 'goshawk,' a falcon prized in medieval falconry — swift, fierce, and aristocratic by association. Another plausible thread runs through the Germanic east, cognate with forms meaning simply 'from the east.' Both etymologies point toward the same thing: a name that arrived in Western Europe as a mark of distinction, carrying the prestige of noble sport or distant origin.
The name's cultural weight in the modern imagination comes overwhelmingly from the Astor dynasty, the American family whose fortune began with German immigrant John Jacob Astor's monopoly on the fur trade in the early nineteenth century and was later compounded in Manhattan real estate. The Waldorf-Astoria hotel, built on the site of their Fifth Avenue mansions, turned the name into an enduring synonym for gilded luxury. Lady Nancy Astor, who became the first woman to take her seat in the British House of Commons in 1919, gave it a second and more subversive dimension — power deployed on behalf of the previously excluded.
For contemporary parents, Astor offers the allure of inherited prestige without the overuse of names like Hudson or Sutton. It has a falcon's quickness in the mouth — two syllables, a hard stop, then release — and its unusual final 'r' gives it a slightly antiquarian quality that reads as distinguished rather than dated. It is equally plausible on a girl or a boy, which broadens its appeal in an era that prizes flexible naming.