Wesson
Likely a shortened or altered form of Weston, ultimately meaning “from the west.”
The #6,505 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 59,181 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Wesson is generally explained as a reduced or assimilated form of Weston. Weston itself comes from Old English west, meaning “west,” plus tūn, meaning “farm,” “settlement,” or “enclosure,” so the original sense was “the western settlement” or “man from the west town.” Some older writers also treated Wesson as a variant formed from the place-name element west alone, but the Weston explanation is the more direct one. The name may have been reshaped by regional pronunciation and spelling habits over time.
History
Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century surname dictionaries commonly linked Wesson with Weston, and some noted it as a phonetic or assimilated form. The name is not especially common, but it survives in England and in English-speaking countries, especially the United States. As with many short surnames in -son, spellings could shift quite freely in parish records and later civil registration.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
One historical source glossed Wesson as essentially “west-son,” a folk-style analysis, though the Weston derivation is more widely accepted.
From the historical record
“WESSCOTT for Westcott, q.v. WESSON, an assim. form of Weston, q.v. WEST (Eng.) One from the West ; a West- couNTRYMAN [M.E. west(e, O.E. west] Robertus del West. — Yorks Poll-Tax, A.D. 1379. A shipman was ther, wonynge [dwelling] fer by weste;”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)