From an Old English place name meaning fertile valley or tilled enclosure.
Tilden is an English surname of Old English origin, generally interpreted as deriving from a place name combining til (fertile or good) with denu (valley) — a name rooted in the agrarian landscape of medieval England, evoking well-watered farmland cupped between hills. As a given name it belongs to the American tradition of honoring distinguished surnames, a practice that flourished particularly in the nineteenth century when ancestral prestige and civic heroism were encoded into children's names. The name's most prominent historical bearer is Samuel Jones Tilden, the New York governor and Democratic presidential candidate of 1876 whose election loss to Rutherford B.
Hayes remains one of American history's most disputed political episodes. Tilden won the popular vote and appeared to hold an electoral college majority before a special commission awarded contested Southern electoral votes to Hayes in what became known as the Compromise of 1877. His name consequently carried a certain melancholy dignity — the almost-president, cheated of history's recognition.
William Tatem "Big Bill" Tilden, the tennis champion of the 1920s, gave the name a different register entirely: athletic dominance and glamour. S. national championships and three Wimbledon titles, and was for a time the most famous athlete in America.
His flamboyant personality made him a celebrity in the modern sense before that word existed for athletes. Today the name Tilden reads as a confident, underused rarity — historically textured, phonetically satisfying, and belonging to a lineage of men who made their mark on American public life.