An English-style surname and place name likely meaning settlement by a strip of land or bank.
Ripton is a place-name turned given name, following the ancient English tradition of township names built on the Anglo-Saxon formula of a personal name or descriptor plus *-tun* (later *-ton*), meaning an enclosure, farmstead, or settlement. The first syllable likely derives from an Old English personal name or a topographic term related to a strip of land (*rip* in some dialects referred to a long narrow plot). There are small settlements called Ripton in England, and most famously Ripton, Vermont — a tiny hamlet in the Green Mountains that became permanently associated with Robert Frost, who lived and wrote there for decades at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and at his own cabin nearby.
Frost's connection to Ripton gives the name an unexpected literary dimension. He is buried in Bennington, Vermont, but Ripton was arguably the place most associated with his later creative life and his role as the grand old man of American poetry. The name thus sits in distinguished company: a quiet New England place-name linked to one of the twentieth century's most celebrated voices in verse.
As a given name, Ripton is exceedingly rare, which aligns it with the contemporary vogue for distinctive place-derived names — names like Sutton, Hollis, Easton, and Remington that carry geographic and historical weight without the over-familiarity of traditional masculine names. Ripton has a solid, monosyllabic landing in its first syllable and a clean finish, making it easy to say while remaining genuinely uncommon. It would suit a child whose parents want something rooted in landscape and literary history.