Origins of Swanbourne

 The Swanbourne name – analysis of the evidence

By Clive Rodgers

The origins of the Swanbourne name have never been entirely clear.  The second half of the name ‘bourne’ is the most obvious, however, being a version of ‘burn’ which means a stream.  Elderly villagers still describe the village as ‘Swanburn‘ phonetically, and in the interview with Jack Campbell, aged 96, the name ‘Swanburn‘ is audibly used every time the village is referred to.

The eminent Victorian Historian Arthur Clear regarded the ‘Swan’ part of the name as being derived from Swain, a standard bearer and relative of Edward the Confessor.  There was a Swain (also Suen or Sven) who also owned part of Swanbourne before the Normans.  Arthur Clear regarded the ‘bourn’ (stream) of Swanbourne as being too small for Swans to use.  However, the Swan was used as Swain’s emblem, and the Swan is even on the Buckinghamshie County flag and emblem today.

Some authors refer to the first useage of the name Swanaburna in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, attributed to King Offa in 792, with regard to it being the boundary of Winslow land which was being gifted to the Abbott of St. Albans.  However, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles comprise many authors. The Venerable Bede is regarded as the most reliable, along with others who recorded events not long after they happened, but they made no reference to Swanbourne or the gifts to the Abbey of St. Albans.  In fact, this 795 event was written from the Abbey of St Albans in the 13th Century some 400 years after the event by Mathew Paris; so he may be considered to be giving us one of the less reliable accounts because it was written so long after the events.  The first time the village was reliably referred to was in the Domesday Book of 1087   Here, there are 5 different enties:

Soeneberno, Sueneberne, Sueneborne, Sueneberie, Sueneberie

A way forward might be to look at the Swan or Suen part of the name with reference to its translation in Old English, as well as its translation in the Frisian language, really a remant of Old English and still spoken by about 50,000 people in the Dutch/German borderlands.

OLD ENGLISH TRANSLATION