Recorded in a wide range of spellings including: Mantram, Mentrum, Mintrim, and Mintrum, this is an English surname. It is also locational, although as to where the place was, from which the surname originated is open to conjecture. It is possible that the modern surname is a developed form of the Dorset town name of Minterne, meaning the place where mint was grown, although the Shropshire village of Minton also of the same meaning, is also a possible candidate. More likely is that the surname derives from some now "lost" medieval village name, as its spelling has no apparent meaning. Over three thousand British Isles surnames are known to derive from places of whom the only public record in the 20th century is the surname itself, often, as with this one in spellings, which make identification of origin, difficult or impossible. It has to be remembered that it was only towards the end of the 19th century that education upto the age of thirteen, in most civilised parts of the world, became universal, and before that name spellings were often guessed at by the local keeper of records, because local accents were very thick, and the carriers of the surname themselves were usually uncertain as to the spelling. Examples of the surname recording taken from early surviving church registers of the diocese of Greater London, and showing the name "development" include: Mary Mintrum who married Will Bagge at St Mary Abbots church, in the village of Kensington, on May 23rd 1583, and Anne Mentrum, who married Peter Marchant, at the church of St Martins in the Field, Westminster, on March 24th 1642. Another later recording is that of Jane Mintrim or Mintrin, the writing is unclear, who married Henry Hoyse at St Brides church, Fleet Street, in the city of London, on April 7th 1716.

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