{"id":8902,"date":"2018-12-22T16:45:03","date_gmt":"2018-12-22T21:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/?page_id=8902"},"modified":"2018-12-22T16:45:03","modified_gmt":"2018-12-22T21:45:03","slug":"introduction-payne-paine","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/?page_id=8902","title":{"rendered":"Introduction: Payne\/Paine"},"content":{"rendered":"

by
\nLarry Pearce
\n12\/22\/18<\/span><\/p>\n

The inspiration for this article began one sleepless night after I uncovered additional ancestors of my Austen family<\/a> on one of my many electronic genealogical research sites<\/a>. I was delighted to see that Grandfather John Payne’s (b.1641) surname could also be spelled \u201cPaine.\u201d I immediately imagined that I could be related to the famous American patriot and founding father, Thomas Paine (1737-1809)<\/a>\u00a0. I was a bit taken aback, however, to learn that his surname was originally spelled \u201cPain.\u201d Even worse, the Latin origin, \u201cPaganus,\u201d literally means \u201cson of pagan.\u201d Incredibly, it was believed way back then that a person who lived in the country must be a heathen. After morphing into the spelling \u201cPaien\u201d in Old French, its use continued to suggest rudeness or backwardness of that person, not unlike the surnames Savage or Wildman. Other possible origins are the Italian word for “fountain in the country” or even the French word for “peacock.” We hasten to say that there is a locale in Normandy called Payne, from where family historians believe our earliest ancestors lived before moving across the Channel to County Sussex in England.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the millennia, other English spellings have included: Payn, Paynee, and Paynne. In German one may find: Pein, Pinn, or Penert; in Norse, Peini; French, Peigne or Pineau; Flemish, Pien or Payen; and Dutch, Pen or Penn. The surname is not the most popular one in the U.S., ranking 183 in use, according to the 2000 Census. British author H.B. Guppy wrote in 1890, in his book Homes of Family Names<\/em>:\u00a0<\/span>\u201cPayne, Paine, and Pain are mostly crowded together in the south-eastern quarter of England, especially in Essex, Kent, Sussex, Hants, Cambridgeshire, and Bucks.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The English Domesday survey of 1086, ordered by William the Conquerer, lists an Edmund filius (son of) Pagen of Somerset County. In 1185, Reginoldus filius Pain was recorded as a member of the Knights Templars in the Crusades. The frequency of our name continued in most every English census and genealogy, but historians seem to agree that the progenitor was Thibault de Payen, a Frenchman born in 1001 AD. Now that\u2019s family history! Perhaps the first Payne family to come to America were William and Anna with their four children in 1635. Possibly we are related to one of these New Englanders.<\/span><\/p>\n

Burke\u2019s General Armory of England<\/em>, published in 1848, contains no less than 48 coats of arms for this family. Three mottos have been associated with our family:<\/span><\/p>\n