Payton is a spelling variant of Peyton, an English surname taken from a village in Sussex and meaning "Paega's town", after an Anglo-Saxon settler. In the United States it took off as a girls' name in the 1990s, alongside football quarterback Peyton Manning's rise to fame. For girls Payton reached the top 100 in 2008 and peaked at number 79 in 2010; it has fallen steadily since and ranks number 440 in 2025.