Colton

Colton has the feel of an open gate on a wooden fence. It is an English place-name surname meaning Cola's town, where Cola was itself an Old English personal name related to the word for coal. It entered first-name use in the United States in the 1980s and surged through the 2010s on the wave of strong-sounding -ton and -en names, settling near the top 98. The two syllables are clipped and confident, a kind of modern American cowboy in pressed jeans. Colton reads as outdoorsy, easygoing, dependable, the boy who knows how to change a tire and likes the radio on the drive home.