Talk:Hainaut Province

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Also spelled "Hainault" in English. -User:Gryffindor
 * Do you have any source for that? I've never seen that before.  Oreo Priest  talk 14:22, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

[] Wife of King Edward II,  daughter of William,  Count of Hainau[L]t.Lathamibird (talk) 01:43, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
 * @Oreo Priest: The London editor of this 1901 edition of Lord Berners' translation of Froissart's Chronicles uses the name Hainault with an "L" at least 10 times, while not using "Hainaut" once. In this 1812 London edition of Berners' Froissart translation, the editor uses "Hainault", "Hainaulter" and "Hainaulters" several times, always with an L, but similarly does not use "Hainaut" once. --VolatileChemical (talk) 01:00, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

"Heynowes" and "Heynalt" are other English spellings of Hainaut
Indeedly so, "Heynowes" is highly in keeping with Hainaut's original Dutch spelling: "Henegouwen"

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ziFKAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA68&dq=france+doway&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAGoVChMI6tzThsv1yAIVx5gaCh3z3gtF#v=onepage&q=france%20doway&f=false

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"Heynowes" is not actually an old spelling of Hainaut, it's a demonym
The lede to this article currently says Hainaut is "historically also known as Heynowes in English", and the infobox lists "Heynowes" at the top in the "other name" field under Hainaut, Hinnot and Hénau, seemingly solidifying the claim that "Heynowes" is, or once was, the standard English version of the placename Hainaut. However, I can't find any historical sources that attest "Heynowes" as an English word used for the province or county of Hainaut in the sense of the name of the region itself. What I do find in historical sources is that "Heynowes" and several close variants were all used as words for people from Hainaut. For instance you can find "Heynowes", "Haynowes"/"Haynowe", "Hanuer", "Heynous", "Heynowers", "Heynows", "Heynoues" and "Henaus" all used in Lord Berners's 1525 translation of Froissart's Chronicles, where they're clearly used to mean "Hainaulters" or "people from Hainaut", and indeed often marked as meaning exactly that in footnotes inserted by the editor of the 1812 edition on Google Books linked here (the editor of the 1901 edition of Berners' translation on Archive.org also spells the modern demonym as "Haynalters"). The area itself is only called variants of "Heynault", "Heynalt", "Haynalt", "Heinalt", "Henalt", "Heynaultes", "Heynaulte", "Haynaulte". If you look up the word "Heynowes" in Google Books, you see that in works prior to 2000 the word only ever appears as a demonym meaning "Hainaulters", not a toponym for Hainaut itself (almost exclusively appearing in editions or quotations of Berners' translation of Froissart, where its use as a demonym is very clear), and otherwise appearing only as a family name or as a spelling variant of "heinous". It seems likely that the idea that "Heynowes" (or its spelling variants) was ever a toponym for Hainaut itself is a misconception that arose sometime in the 21st century, and the intro to this article provides no citation to evidence otherwise. The lede and infobox should be edited to remove that claim and reflect the fact that Hainaut was known historically in English as Heynault, Heynalt, Heynaulte, or some other such similar variant, and if the word Heynowes is mentioned it should be specified that it referred to the people, not the place. --VolatileChemical (talk) 00:23, 5 September 2023 (UTC)