THE NAME CHEYNE [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Snt,—If
it be not too late, as the -information hitherto sent you has been so meagre, may I venture to supplement a little ? Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, is called' after 'Lord Cheyne, proprietor of the land in the seventeenth century. The late Professor Cheyne, perhaps the best known of recent bearers of the name, certainly was called " Chay-nay two syllables. But I have often heard the Row pronounced as one syllable, and this is probably correct. For the origin of the name is probably, as Professor Weekley • says, " a Middle English spelling • Of chain, probably meaning the' barrier by which streets were often closed at night," a meaning given in the Oxford Dictionary as being found as early as Chaucer. Chain is the old French chaeine, chaene, from Latin eaten, and ProfeSsor Weekley cites a Richard de Catena 'from the Close Rolls. But the analogy he cites, viz., Barr, is dbilbtful, becanse most, at any rate, of the Barra are Scots, coming froth the 'common Gaelic barr—a height. So far as I have discovered, the surname Cheyne also appears earliest -in Scotland. Henry de Chen de Duffus, near Elgin, was Bishop of Aberdeen in 1281. The name is still common in Aberdeen, while in Edinburgh we also haire • Chien pro' nounced Sheen, presumably, though not certainly, a variant. (The Oxford Dictionary gives both " chene " and " chearte " as old spellings of chain.) The earliest EngiiShnian of the name whom I have noted is a Sir John Cheyne, who was M.P. in 1435.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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