Eilert Ekwall (“The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, 4th edition” Oxford: Clarendon Press 1960) notes the two earliest references to the township of Heptonstall which stands above Hebden Bridge in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The first is in the Wakefield Court Rolls of 1274, and the second in the Feudal Aids Rolls of 1316. He gives the derivation as "the stall or stable or the like above Hebden", the latter having metathesized via Hepten and Heptun to Hepton.

He also gives the earliest references to the place-name Hebden or Hebden Bridge as Hebdene in the Domesday Book 1086, as Hebden in a 1228 Feet of Fines, and as Heppedene in 1279 Assize Rolls. He proposes that the meaning of the place-name Hebden is that of “rose-hip valley” from the Old English heope-denu.

Putting the two together, the place-name Heptonstall may therefore be considered to mean "the stable above the valley of the rose-hips"

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