Triston is an American spelling of Tristan, the name of the Cornish knight whose doomed love for Isolde was one of the great romances of the Middle Ages. The name probably comes from the Pictish Drustan, of uncertain meaning, but medieval storytellers linked it to the French triste, "sad", and the reading "sorrowful" has stuck. Triston entered the century at its peak, number 442 in 2000, stayed in the top 1000 until the mid-2010s and has since eased to number 2447 in 2025 with 56 boys.