The Oxford English dictionary actually traces the word back to the fourth century. It has been used by Shakespeare, Bacon and Pope before being exported to the American colonies by Puritan settlers, along with the word 'fall' for autumn and 'guess' for think.
Some British people falsely assume ‘got’ and ‘gotten’ have the same meaning and Americans use them interchangeably in all circumstances. Contrarily, both of these past participles convey slightly different ideas. "They have gotten an apartment in Boston" means they have recently taken the apartment, whereas "they have got an apartment in Boston" simply indicates they have it (there are those who would argue that in a sentence like this one ‘got’ is redundant, and that ‘have’ alone would do the job). In informal usage, 'have got' can also be followed by an infinitive to denote obligation (I’ve got to go to the party means “I must”), whereas have gotten with an infinitive denotes opportunity (I’ve gotten to go to the party means “I’ve been given the chance to attend”).
In fact, Americans largely cut down on usage of the word ‘got’ as a past participle, instead opting for only the word ‘have’ in its place, with some taking the view the word's existence itself is unnecessary as 'have' can do the job all on its own. For example, "I haven’t any memory", "I haven’t any money in my purse". And, as a final note, the British did retain the word 'gotten' in aspic, such as ill-gotten, forgotten and begotten.
Just to quell any suspicisions that I am writing with an anti-British English agenda, there are many things I favour in British English over its American counterpart, such as omission of the overused demonstrative adjective 'that', especially in indirect quotes.
Hopefully readers will have gotten my point after they have got through this article.
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