From Old English 'forst' meaning frost; originally a surname for a cold-natured person.
Frost as a given name descends from the Old English *forst* or *frost*, referring simply to the crystalline ice that forms in freezing air — one of the elemental English words whose roots reach back to Proto-Germanic *frustaz*. As a surname it described someone born in winter, or bearing a cold or pale temperament, or simply living in a frost-prone place; surnames became given names in the English tradition at a rate that has only accelerated in the twenty-first century. Winter-themed names carry their own mythology: clarity, stillness, the hard beauty of frozen landscapes.
The towering cultural association is Robert Frost, the American poet whose four Pulitzer Prizes and deceptively plain New England verse made him arguably the most beloved American poet of the twentieth century. *The Road Not Taken*, *Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening*, *Mending Wall* — these poems are so deeply embedded in the culture that invoking the name Frost is almost inseparable from invoking a particular mode of American pastoral meditation. When President Kennedy asked Frost to recite a poem at his 1961 inauguration, it was the first time a poet had participated in a presidential inauguration in American history.
As a given name in contemporary use, Frost appeals to parents seeking something that reads as a nature name without being botanical or purely feminine in register. It sits alongside Ash, River, and Stone in a family of elemental English monosyllables that feel both ancient and modern. The name carries cool elegance — and the enormous shadow of one great poet.