Old English place name meaning 'settlement by a spring' or 'farm by the well'.
Wilton is an English place name pressed into service as a personal name, following the well-worn path from geography to surname to given name that produced so many dignified Anglo-American names. The place name Wilton — borne most famously by Wilton in Wiltshire, England — derives from the Old English "Wilig-tun," meaning a farmstead or settlement on the River Wylye, or alternatively a settlement among the willows. Wilton, Wiltshire was a significant medieval town, home to a famous Benedictine abbey and, later, to the earls of Pembroke — making Wilton carpet, woven nearby, one of the most prestigious floor coverings in English history.
The name carries the aristocratic associations of its geographic origin: the earls of Pembroke at Wilton House were patrons of literature and the arts, and the countess Mary Herbert was a major Elizabethan poet and patron to Philip Sidney. This gives Wilton a faint Renaissance literary atmosphere. As a given name, Wilton flourished in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when English place names and surname names were fashionable choices for boys.
Wilton Norman Chamberlain — better known as Wilt Chamberlain — was perhaps the most famous American bearer, the towering basketball player whose career statistics remain among the most remarkable in professional sports history. Wilton today reads as a stately, slightly forgotten name — not unlike its cousin Milton, which has undergone modest revival as parents seek Mil- names beyond the ubiquitous Miles. Wilton has the same quiet dignity, a name that sounds like it belongs to someone who takes long walks and knows the name of every tree.