Haines (surname)

Haines
Other names
Variant form(s)Haine, Hayne, Haines, Hains, Hanes, and Haynes

Haines is a surname.

Etymology

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, the modern names Haine, Hayne, Haines, Hains, Hanes, and Haynes all originate in four different medieval names, which came to sound the same.[1]

  1. The Middle English name Hain. This is thought to have originated as a pet form of Anglo-Norman names such as Reynald, Reyner and Rainbert.
  2. The personal name Hagan, which is itself of diverse origins.
  3. The Old English word haga ('enclosure', Middle English hay), in the oblique case form hagan (Middle English hayne), whose use could have arisen from a locative epithet such as æt hagan ('at the enclosure').
  4. Perhaps the Middle English word heyne (and its variants, such as haine, hayn), meaning 'mean wretch, niggard'.

The forms ending in -s show the addition of the genitive case ending, implying that the name-bearer was the child of a father called Hain, or addition of -s on the analogy of such names.

Additional etymologies for Haines and Haynes names not shared by the Hayne types are:

  1. the place-name of Haynes, Bedfordshire, indicating people from that village (whose name itself derived from Old English *hægen ('enclosures').[2]
  2. the Irish name Hynes.

The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland also considers the suggestion of origins in the Welsh name Einws (a pet form of Einion), but does not find evidence to support this.

Distribution

Around 2011, there were 9551 bearers of the surname Haines in Great Britain and 79 in Ireland. In 1881, there were 6890 bearers of the name in Great Britain, concentrated in the south of England, particularly in London, Gloucestershire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Warwickshire, while around the mid-nineteenth century bearers of the name in Ireland were concentrated in Cork.[3]

Haines is the 410th most common surname in Great Britain with 23,109 bearers. It is most common in Gwynedd where it is the 6th most common surname with 4,931 bearers. Other concentrations include Merseyside, (198th, 1,727), Cheshire, (213th, 1,739), West Yorkshire, (245th, 1,751), Surrey, (281st, 1,815) and Essex (404th, 1,715).

Persons named Haines
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References
  1. The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, ed. by Patrick Hanks, Richard Coates, and Peter McClure, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), II, pp. 1169, 1233-34 [s.vv. Haines, Hayne, Haynes, and the other entries referred to there]; ISBN 978-0-19-967776-4.
  2. Mills, A. D., A Dictionary of English Place Names (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), s.v. Haynes.
  3. The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, ed. by Patrick Hanks, Richard Coates, and Peter McClure, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), II, p. 1169 [s.v. Haines]; ISBN 978-0-19-967776-4.
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