English Place-name Society

Survey of English Place-Names

A county-by-county guide to the linguistic origins of England’s place-names – a project of the English Place-Name Society, founded 1923.

Haynes

Major Settlement in the Parish of Haynes

Historical Forms

  • Hagenes 1086 DB c.1206 BHRSi.104 Hy3 Ch 1317
  • Hagnes c.1150 BM
  • Hawenes 1202 Ass 1219 FF 1291 NI 1297 SR 1302,1316 FA 1347 Pat 1390–2 CS
  • Hawenis 1219 FF 1276 Ass
  • Haunnes 1242 Fees887
  • Hawnes 1247 Ass 1287 Ass 1426 IpmR 1535 VE 1549 Pat 1800,1830 Jury
  • Haunes 1247 Ass 1257 FF 1276,1287 Ass 1291 NI 1326 Cl 1327,1351 Ipm 1361 Cl 1402 CS 1610 Speed
  • Hauwnes 1287 Ass
  • Hawens 1325 Cl 1780 Jury
  • Haynes c.1560 Linc
  • Hains 1712 NQi

Etymology

This is a difficult name and one can only offer tentative solu- tions of it. There is, quite apart from the mention of the hero Hagena in Widsith , adequate evidence for an OE  pers. name Hagena , and Björkman (ZAN 42) seems right in accepting it as against Redin (97) and Forssner (139) who are sceptical about its being anything but continental. With this pers. name as a basis one can perhaps take this name as consisting of Hagenan (gen. sg.), followed by næss , applied here to a spur of land. It is not unsuited to the site of Haynes, the nucleus of which we may assume to have lain along the ridge on which the church stands. For the use of this word for an inland site, cf. Nazing (Ess) in PN in -ing 47. Hagonannæss would inevitably become Hagenes , Hawnes in ME.

One other possibility may however be suggested. The OE  haga, 'hedge,' was in OE  and, in the form hawe , in ME, used of an enclosure, a yard, a messuage. The original name may have been haga -næss , 'haw-ness,' and have been descriptive of a spur of land on which stood a 'haw.' There is a curiously apposite parallel for such a name in the Swedish Haganäs, dealt with in Sverges Ortnamn vii. 1. 236. The modern spelling and pronunciation are entirely arbitrary, though perhaps influenced by the alternative hay = hedge.

Places in the same Parish

Early-attested site