HEIGHWAY
The surname Heighway is of English origin and derives from the Old English word heahweg, meaning *highway* or *main road*. It is believed to have originally been a topographic name for someone who lived beside a principal thoroughfare. The earliest recorded spelling of the family name is that of Richard de Heyweye, dated 1292 in the Placita de Quo Warranto during the reign of King Edward I, the so-called “Hammer of the Scots”. Subsequent spellings—such as Richard Highway in the Close Rolls of 1437—illustrate the gradual standardisation of the name and its transmission through successive generations as a hereditary family name. In Wiltshire the place-name Highway appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Hiwei and is composed of an Old English element, either heg or the West Saxon hieg, meaning hay, and the suffix way, road; together the name therefore means *road for carrying hay*. It may also refer to a residence by or on a high road, given that the same elements underpin both interpretations.
The surname first appears in parish registers in the late fourteenth century. In London on 17 February 1580 the christening of Thomas son of Richard Hyway is recorded at All Hallows, London Wall, together with the christening of his daughter Ann on 16 February 1584. In Wiltshire, the name is recurrent in church records; Jane Highway married Edward Bridgman at Great Somerford on 10 September 1732, and Edmund Heighway was christened at St. Peter and St. Paul, Marlborough, on 21 July 1807. Over the centuries these records attest to the continued use of the name within English society and illustrate a lineage that has persevered through the ages.
Typical given names associated with the Heighway surname
Male
- Andrew
- David
- George
- James
- John
- Jonathan
- Laurie
- Lee
- Mark
- Matthew
- Michael
- Paul
- Richard
- Stephen
- Steven
Female
- Amanda
- Claire
- Elizabeth
- Emma
- Jean
- Julie
- Mary
- Samantha
- Sarah
- Susan
How to communicate the surname Heighway in...
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There are approximately 697 people named Heighway in the UK. That makes it roughly the 9,726th most common surname in Britain. Around 11 in a million people in Britain are named Heighway.
