This surname is derived from the name of an ancestor. 'the son of Main'; v. Mayne (1).

Ralph III. Main, Northumberland, 1166: Hodgson's History of Northumberland.

Walter fil. Main, Northumberland, 1168. Hodgson's History of Northumberland.

(2) Local, 'of Maine'; v. Mayne.

1798. Married — Thomas Main and Jane Dawson: St. George, Hanover Square.

1805. — William Dodson and Ann Maine: ibid.

(1) A surname borne by many fishermen families at Naim and neighboring villages is simply the Norse Macnus, q. v. and is probably a survival from the old Viking days in the Moray Firth. Some years ago there were thirty John Mains in the town of Naim, and a tee-name had to be given each to distinguish them from one another. There are also many of the name in Aberdeenshire.

(2) in the southern counties the name is probably another spelling of Mayne, q. v. William Mane was keeper of the guard of the king (architenens garde), 1477 (SBR., p. 262). William Mane was citinar in Sanctandrois, 1551 (Rollok, 94), and John Mane, tenant on lands of Kelso Abbey, 1567 (Kelso, p. 523). Patrick Mane and James Mane were beidmen in Edinburgh, 1584. James Main of Wester-house was retoured in lands, 1699 (Retours, Lanark, 452).

(1) Perhaps from the old personal name Mayne, or (2) from Maine, the French province so named. Our references are not early enough to guide us. Jasper Mayne was clerk of the diocese of St. Andrews in 1505 (Hunter, p. 7), and Jhones Mayne rented the land of Gartinwyne in 1520 (Rental). John Mayne was burgess of Glasgow in 1549 (Protocols, I), Nicolas Mayne was admitted burgess of Aberdeen in 1603 (NSCM., I, p. 98). John Mayne in Touchhill and Robert Mayne in Airth are in record in 1622. John Mayne was burgess of Edinburgh in 1648 (Inquis., 3394), and Thomas Mayne was merchant burgess of Kirkwall, 1655 (Retours, Orkney, 72). John Mayne (1759-1846), minor poet and journalist, was author of The Siller Cun. Mane 1567.

(Teutonic) Strength [Middle English main. Old English magen = Old Saxon, Old Norse, O.H.Ger. megin, strength, power (a fairly common element in Old Teutonic names] (French-Celt.) One from the Duchy of Maine [French Maine, the Latin-Celt. Cenomania] (French-Latin) name derived from an armorial or trade sign of a Hand (or a nickname) [French main, Latin manus, the hand]

(English, French) Descendant of Magino (strength); one who came from Maine, in France; the strong man.

From Mayenne in Maine, a powerful baronial house, of which Walter de Mayenne occurs in 976 (La Roque, i. 159,160). Judael of Mayenne had a vast barony in Devon 1086, and his family long continued there. In 1165 Walter Fitz Juel de Mayenne (de Meduana) held a barony of twenty-one knight’s fees in Kent”—The Norman People. Judael appears in Domesday as Judhel de Totenais, so named from his barony of Totness. “Nothing is known of this person but that he possessed the baronies of Totness and Barnstaple, which intimates that he was high in the Conqueror’s favour.” - Lysons. M. Delisle mistakes him for one of the house of Toeni. He was probably grandfather of the Juhel de Meduana who witnesses one of the Empress Maud’s charters to Geoffrey de Mandeville. Dugdale mentions a Walter de Meduana “amongst these who were witnesses to the grant, made by William de Braose to the monks of S. Florence at Salmure (Saumur) in France, whereof King William the Conqueror and Maud his Queen were some of the number.” He also speaks of the other Walter, who lived in the time o f Henry II., and upon the assessment made upon the marriage of the King’s daughter, certified to a barony of twenty knight’s fees de veteri feoffamento and nine de novo. He cannot have been fond of campaigning, for the only further notice of him to be met with is, that he was fined in 1171 for not joining the expedition to Ireland, and again in 1186 “in regard he was not with the King's army at Galway.” Nothing more is known of him than that he married the widow of Roger Earl of Hereford, who survived him and enjoyed his inheritance. But there must be some mistake in the name, for there is no Roger Earl of Hereford to be found in the Bohun pedigree.

Nicholas de Meduana, of Dorset and Somerset, occurs in the Great Roll of the Pipe of first Richard I. According to Lobineau, “Juhel de Mayenne, Seigneur de Dinan” in 1197, bore on six escutcheons six mullets pierced of six points; a coat entirely different from any of those borne by the English families of this name. One of them—the Maynes of Teffont-Ewyas, claim, by Burke’s account, to descend from “Joel de Maine, of King’s Nymet, temp. Hen. I. another, settled in the neighbourhood of Stirling since the commencement of the fifteenth century, received the title of Baron Newhaven in 1794, but it expired with its first holder. This Sir William was the sixth son of William Mayne of Powis, co. Clackmannan, the husband of three wives and the father of twenty-one children, “in whose house the cradle is said to have rocked for fifty years.” I need scarcely add that the family is not extinct, though Powis passed through one of his granddaughters to the Alexanders.

From the French Province.

Local. From a French province of that name. Magne, great, large, rich, powerful, the same as magnus in Latin.

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, Maino. Mayne; a local name

Cuthbert Mayne, a Cornishman, who was chaplain to Francis Tregian, Esq., was executed as a papist at Launceston in 1577. Tregian escaped with his life, but not with his freedom, and his estates were sequestrated, and his family ruined (P.). Their descendants can only blush for the bigot's act of three centuries ago. Zachary Mayne, a noted Cornish divine, died at Exeter, the place of his birth, in 1694 (P.).