English: habitational name from any of the various places with this name, as for example in Cheshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Suffolk, and North Yorkshire. For the most part these were named in Old English as ‘Mula’s settlement’, from the Old English personal name or byname Mula ‘mule’ + tun ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’, but in some cases they may have been originally farms where mules were reared or kept. In the case of the Norfolk place name the first element was probably a personal name Moda, a short form of the various compound names with a first element mod ‘spirit’, ‘mind’, ‘courage’.