The first element of Colston, in the Bingham Wapentake of Nottinghamshire, is probably the Old Norse male personal name Kolrcombined with the Old English element tun ‘an enclosure; a farmstead; a village; an estate’. Thus it is an Anglo-Scandinavian hybrid name.
The later prefix Car was added to distinguish this from Colston Bassett. Early spellings suggest that this developed from Old Norse kirkja, ‘church’, in its Middle English form kirk(e). Later this was undoubtedly confused with the word carr (Middle English ker), ‘marshland’, common in Nottinghamshire place-names.
