Hunthor's date of birth is not canonically established, but it does appear in notes associated with The Wanderings of Húrin in volume XI of The History of Middle-earth. The date of I 467 given there seems to fit well with what we know of Hunthor's life and death.

The Silmarillion merely states that Hunthor was a kinsman of Brandir, the Lord of Brethil, without attempting to explain the relationship. Elsewhere (specifically, in the same source quoted in note 1 above) we have a genealogy describing the relationship in detail. According to that source, both Hunthor and Brandir were great-grandsons of Halmir through different grandfathers, so the two Men were formally second cousins to one another. Though The Silmarillion portrays Túrin Turambar as an outsider who settled in Brethil, in fact he was also a great-grandson of Halmir (through Halmir's daughter Hareth) and so Túrin was exactly as closely related to Hunthor and Brandir as they were to each other.

Hunthor's name is not explained, and its meaning is far from clear. Assuming that it derived from Elvish (which is by no means certain), then Hun- might be related to the word for 'heart'. The -thor is equally uncertain, but it was a common ending for masculine names among the Haladin. It possibly shares a meaning with the same element in the name Denethor, which in this context probably comes from thara 'tall, slender'.