Variant of Kingston, an English place name meaning 'the king's settlement or estate'.
Kingsten is a variant spelling of Kingston, a name whose origins lie in the Old English compound *cyninges tun* — literally the king's settlement or royal estate. The word *tun* (enclosure, farmstead, town) is one of the most productive place-name elements in the English language, surviving in hundreds of English towns whose names end in *-ton* or *-ington*. Kingston upon Thames, the ancient coronation site of Saxon kings on the outskirts of London, is perhaps the most historically significant bearer of the place name, its very stones associated with the crowning of at least seven Anglo-Saxon monarchs.
As a surname, Kingston traveled to the Caribbean with British colonizers, and it is Jamaica's capital city — Kingston — that gave the name its most culturally resonant modern associations. The city's relationship with reggae music, and particularly the Trenchtown neighborhood's role in producing Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, and an entire generation of musical revolutionaries, wrapped Kingston in a cool of global proportions. When Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale named their son Kingston in 2006, they were drawing on exactly that layered resonance: English royal heritage filtered through Jamaican swagger.
Kingsten's spelling variant substitutes *-sten* for *-ston*, introducing a faint Norse or Scandinavian visual quality — stave rather than town — while retaining the sonic profile exactly. It is a choice that makes the name look custom without making it unrecognizable, a naming strategy that reflects the contemporary appetite for differentiation within the familiar.