Colton is an English surname taken from several place names and means "Cola's town" or "coal town", from an Old English byname meaning dark or coal-colored. It became a first name in the United States in the 1980s and has a Western, open-country feel. Colton ranked number 111 in 2000, entered the top 100 in 2008, peaked at number 59 in 2019 and stands at number 103 in 2025.