'Loughton' means the farm or settlement of a man called Luhha.
In Saxon times it was Lukintune; Edward the Confessor's charter of 1062 for Waltham Abbey is the first written evidence, as Lukinton. The Domesday Book of 1086 spells it Lochintuna (Lochentuna in another account). Its two other old hamlets also carried personal names: Alderton, 'the farm of Aethelwaru', and Debden, 'the valley of Tippa'.