Origin of Hetherington name

 

hetheringtonbc.blogspot.ca

Hetherington name origin: What do we know?

There is no definitive origin of the name Hetherington. The meaning of the name remains in dispute. This document collects name origin stories and articles from four sources each providing a different meaning of “hether.” I leave it to readers to decide accurate meaning,and to future researchers to provide more clarity.

Or, as Desmond puts it:

"In the end it must remain with individual bearers of the names to draw upon family traditions and to seek out such documentary evidence as is available to decide the matter for themselves."

Five stories about the origin of the name Hetherington
1. "There is a general consensus is that "Hetherington" in Northumberland (do a google map search), which survives as Hetherington farm, was the site of the original Hetherington village. First formally recorded in 1279, some earthwork remains of earlier buildings are visible on the north and east sides of the farmstead, and includes the sites of the buildings."

Hetherington Farm today

http://www.geolocation.ws/v/W/File%3AHetherington%20Farm%20-%20geograph.org.uk%20-%20488936.jpg/-/en

Critics point out that there is no proof of the above statement and that evidence indicates the site has only been know as "Hetherington farm" for the last two hundred years.

There is however strong evidence of Hetherington presence at Hethersgil with a possible "strong building/bastle" at "High Gate".  Walton and Walton Rigg are noted locations during 1500's.

2. According to George MacDonald Fraser's 'Steel Bonnets, Hetherington as "a Norse name (Hetherings, Hoderings)." Should this be true the name would mean a village where Hetherings lived.  

3. According to another source, the name is of English origin and is a derivation is from the Olde English pre 7th Century word "haeth", a heath and "tun" a settlement, thus "the farm of the heath". During the Middle Ages, when it was becoming increasingly usual for people to migrate to other areas to seek work, they would often adopt or be given their placename of birth as a means of identification, thus resulting in the wide dispersal of the names. In Hexham, Northumberland, one Elizabeth Hetherington married Lionell Charlton on 12th May 1594.  The name appears frequently in and around Hethersgill in the West Marches (near Carlisle) during the same period.

The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Richard de Heterhington, which was dated 1298, Assize Rolls, Lincolnshire, during the reign of King Edward I, The Hammer of the Scots, 1272 - 1307. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Heatherington#ixzz2CYnt0HvO

4. According to Desmond Holden

Hetherington: What's in a name? The Peak Advertiser 25th August 1997.
This is a location name and refers to a place in Northumberland on the edges of "Wark Forest". It is less isolated than formerly since the "Pennine Way" now circles round on a radius of approximately ¼ mile on its Western side. Otherwise the nearest place of any size is Wark, to the East on the Wall-Otterburn Road (B 6320).
Hetherington has a counterpart in Northamptonshire but that has now evolved into Harrington. This was first recorded in Domesday (1086) as "Arintone" but nearly a century later (1184) it was described as "Hederington" and later as "Hetheringtone" (1288), then "Hezerinton" (1236) and finally as "Hetherington" in 1249.
At what date it converted to "Harrington" is not ascertainable nor the reason why it should have changed except. possibly, the presence of Harringworth (15 miles North-East) might have had something to do with it.
There is no connection with either Harrington in Cumberland or Lincolnshire. In spite of the same spelling, the origins are quite different. Hetherington is also encountered as "Heatherington", "Etherington", and "Ethrington" but these variations are not significant.
The name is made up principally of two units which are firstly which are, firstly, "Hether" and, secondly, "-ton".
The element "Hether-" is interesting because although it looks like "Heather" (i.e. the purple plant 'Erica') there is no connection. In Scotland and much of the North of England, this familiar shrub was originally called "Hadder". In the Midlands and the Southern Regions the word "heath" was certainly used but in this case it was merely an extension of the same expression which described wild, uncultivated areas, such as "Hounslow Heath".
Often it was particularised as the "heath plant". In between, especially on the Yorkshire Moors and areas of Scandinavian influence the imported Nordic "ling" was current. However, as well as in the South, the term "heath" was also used in the North and in Scotland in the same sense as descriptive of Moorland. But it is important to remember that "hadder" and "heath" came from two entirely different origins.
However by the Eighteenth Century a writer on Scottish Matters took it into his head that the two words were related and concocted "heather" and introduced it into one of his pieces in 1730.
So it follows that "Hetherington" cannot, nor was ever interpreted as something like "the place where heather grows". Otherwise it ought to have ended up as "Hadderington". This would have corresponded with our own local "Haddon" which really does mean "the heather-covered hill".
Thus, "Hether" was adopted to describe the surroundings of the early settlement as being "heath", that is to say, wild and wind- swept uplands.
Merely in passing it is interesting to note that on account of heath-lands being so barren and remote and so thinly populated, our ancestors avoided them and deemed their few inhabitants positively to be an alien species! This adds some credibility to the suggestion that this is the source of the word "heathen" and especially when it is set alongside the derivation of the word "pagan". The latter was based on the Latin for "field" which was "ager" and the implication was that "field-dwellers" were also a race apart! In early versions of the Scriptures, for example, the term "heathen" appears in contexts where today we would employ "foreign". A good example lies in Mark: VII:26 where the woman was described as a "heathen".
The second, unit, "ton" is another old expression which is believed originally to have meant "barrier" or "fence". It may be detected in the Modern German equivalent of "zaun". It is one of the most widely encountered units in place-names. At first it probably signified nothing more that "the enclosed space" and applied to some sort of arrangement designed to provide both shelter and a defence. Some sites eventually proved more advantageous and they expanded and developed and the word "tun" (the original form) took on an extended meaning and from which the word "Town" emerged.
Finally the intermediate "-ing-" is even more widespread in place- names especially in combination with "-ton". It is capable of a great many interpretations, but in this case it converts "Hether" into an adjective and thereby describes the early settlers as "the heath people".
Assembling all these units, "Hetherington" can be interpreted as "The enclosed settlement belonging to the people who dwell on the heath". As a surname, then, it would simply have indicated that the bearer was "One who lived in Hetherington".
It is doubtful if this name was ever carried far afield by our earlier ancestors who were thus called. So its existence would have been almost unknown beyond a limited radius. The development of surnames shows that the further a person migrated from his native place, the more generalised became his identity among his new neighbours.
In a situation which might have arisen here, "the man from over at Hetherington" might have been understood locally - perhaps as far as Wark and even Hexham, but once he had travelled beyond where the place was recognised, unless another name could be found for him by way of an occupational name or a nick-name, he would have been identified, for example, as "Cumberland" or "North". In Suffolk we find a Thomas de Comerland (1524) and in the same county, in 1230 a Aylmar del North.
The name certainly seems to have taken a long while to establish itself in its own right. Surnames had been evolving ever since the 1300's and there are references occur to Richard de Hetherington (1298) and to Edmund de Hethrynton (1316). These references indicate the widespread range of the name as they can be related to places in the Midlands.
The present-day pattern of distribution of name supports the notion that it remained localised. In the Directory taking in the place itself, there are nearly 100 entries, while across the rest of the North-East there are several hundred altogether. These numbers rapidly fall as one moves away. London can muster about 50, Merseyside and Birmingham about 20 each, in Leicester it drops to 12 and after that entries are in single figures.
There was some emigration into Scotland and Ireland. The Northern Ireland Directory contains about 100 names and the most celebrated bearers of the name, William Hetherington (1803-1865) and Sir Hector Hetherington (1888-1965) both came from the Lowlands, over the Border.
There are just under 20 entries in the Local Directory under the form "Hetherington" and a corresponding number under "Etherington". It is well known to us here in Bakewell on account of Graeme Hetherington our Community Policeman.



5. According to an uncited reference.

I was told that the name came from a Saxon chief named Etherig. Hence Etherigstown.

English (northern border counties): habitational name from a place so named in Northumberland, possibly from Old English hēahdēor ‘stag’, ‘deer’ or hãddre ‘heather’ + -ing ‘characterized by’ + tūn ‘farmstead’, ‘settlement’. This surname has been established in Ireland since the 16th century

Read more on FamilyEducation: http://genealogy.familyeducation.com/surname-origin/hetherington#ixzz29IaDqZSQ