Preston surname meaning

Preston is an English habitational surname from one of the many places called Preston—most famously Preston in Lancashire, but also dozens of other settlements. The place-name combines Old English prēost, “priest,” with tūn, “farmstead” or “estate,” so it originally marked land linked to a priest or church community. Because so many places share the name, separate Preston families can have unrelated geographic origins. Ancestry also notes an occasional Middle English “son of the priest” reading, but the place-name route dominates the documentation. Place is high confidence for the catalog.