Survey of English Place-Names

Historical Forms

• æt Stæningum c.880 BCS553 c.1000 Saints c.1000

• stænig 1013–1066 Coins

• Estaninges 1085 France

• Staninges 1086 DB 1301 Ipm

• Staning 1228 Pat 1261 Ass

• Stenynges, Steninges 1259 Pat 1261 Ass c.1270 Gerv

• Stonynges 1261 Ass

• Stening(e) 1274 RH 1281 Abbr 1610 Speed

• Steininges 1279 QW

• Steyninge 1316 FA

• Staynyng 1509 LP

• Steining 1622 MarL

• Staining 1675 Ogilby

• Steanenge 1574 SRS3,94

• Steanyng 1610 Recov

• Stenning 1641 MarL 1726 MarC

• Steyning otherwise Stenning 1750 Recov

• le Stenyng (1497 Ct)

• Schepenstrete 1271 Ass

• le Cokstrete 1470 Ct

Etymology

This name offers difficulties. As Ekwall notes (PN in -ing 62–3) OE  pers. names with a first element Stān - are not on record. If we have a patronymic here we should probably have to take it that it was derived from a pet-form based on the second element of a pers. name. Such are found, but there is the further and much greater difficulty that if this is the case we have what is probably not found elsewhere, viz. a patronymic in OE showing i -mutation of the stem-vowel under the influence of the suffix. Such i -mutation however is not impossible or indeed unlikely if we take the name instead to be an ingas - derivative of the common word stan. This is shown by the history of Staines (Mx), Stana in 969 (Crawf 6) and c. 1060 (Earle 302). From this was formed stæninga haga (Earle 302), 'the haw of the people of Staines' (preserved in Staining Lane in the City of London), so that we might take Steyning to be from OE  stǣningas , 'men who dwelt by some prominent stone or rock.' Such a name could hardly arise, so far as we are aware, on the site of Steyning, and it is perhaps better that we should endeavour to associate the name with the OE  word stǣne , 'stony place' or the like, discussed under Old Steine infra 292.Stǣningas would then mean 'dwellers on the stony place.' The geological conditions unfortunately are not decisive. The Rev. J. C. Hughes calls our attention to the statement by Mantell in Horsfield's History of Sussex (i. 16) “at Steyning a bluish- grey marl-stone emerges from under the chalk and forms a terrace of considerable breadth,” and to that in the Geological Survey memoir on 'The Country near Brighton and Worthing' (1924) “a road-cutting at the north-west entrance to Steyning gives good exposures of the malmstone beds and the top of the greensand just below the chalk is discernible in the lane skirting the northern side of the town.” It is just possible that this emergence of the stone from the chalk gave rise to the name of Steyning, but clearly it could never have been particularly prominent here. Alternatively we might take the reference to be to superficial gravel deposits, though the traces of such here are insignificant. On the whole a topographical explanation of the name seems the most probable but in face of the impossibility of reconstructing the surface of Steyning as it first appeared to the settlers the exact significance of the name must remain unsettled. It should be added that we have evidence of a field- name le Stenyng (1497Ct ) in the neighbourhood of Mundham.This must be an ing -derivative of stǣne but of the singular type discussed by Ekwall op. cit. 1–18, and denote 'a stony piece of ground.' It is exceedingly unlikely that Stæningas is the plural of that word.