Recorded as Stocken, Stockin, Stocking, and Stockings, this is an English surname. According to the famous Victorian etymologister Canon Charles Bardsley writing in the year1880, the word amd hence the surname, is a diminutive of the word 'stock' and means 'at the little stocks'. This description presumably refers to the punishment stocks, and would indicate that the name is topographical for somebody who lived by the place where the stocks were set up. However there are a number of places in England called Stock, or places that have Stock as the first element, and here the origination is from the pre 7th century word 'stoc'. This has dual meanings including a monastery cell, a trunk of a tree used as a bridge, a boundary marker, or even a meeting place for the local council, in which case it is often found as Stoke or Stokes. The earliest known recording of this surname is thatr of Edmund del Stocking of the county of Buckinghamshire in the Hundred Rolls of landowners in 1273. This suggests that Stocking was an actual place. Other recordings include John Stockings, married at St James Clerkenwell, on May 15th 1734, and John Stocking of Norfolk, who was married to Elizabeth Wright, at St Georges chapel, Hanover Square, Westminster, on August 6th 1759.