ORIGIN AND MEANING OF THE NAME HENNING

The name Henning is indigenous to the North German areas Mecklenburg, Hannover, Hamberg, Holstein and Pommern. Especially the towns Stralsund and Greiffswald, in Mecklenburg, near the Baltic Sea is well known as places where the name originated. Both towns formed part of Denmark up until the Thirty Years War (1618 — 1648).

Between the years 1300 and 1500 the name HENNING was used as a popular nickname for “the Son of John (Johannes). In the old Baltic dialect a rooster was called a “Hen” (hen = male, henne = female). The Baltic (or North German) “ing” was added to indicate that it was a name deduced from the name of a father or ancestor.

The name originated amongst noblemen and knights, such as[i]:

·         Henning = Johannes Older, who lived during 1290 in the vicinity of Stralsund —probably Demmin, although proof have been found of Henning involvement in Stralsund itself in the church archives of the Evangelical Church, Stralsund;

·          Henning = Johannes Brunswick, who lived during 1305 at Kolberg. Today Kolberg is in Poland, but during 1305 it formed part of the country which is known today as Germany.

·          Henning = Johannes Dotenberg (Knight) who lived during 1326 in the vicinity of Greiffswald. It is suspected that he was a descendant of Johannes Older.

·         Earl Henning of Irkesleve who lived during 1330 in Haldslohe.

The name Henning originated approximately in the year 1290 near the town STRALSUND, in the North of Germany. In the year 1305 the name was found in KOLBERG (in the present Poland) and in 1326 in GREIFFSWALD. LIPPSTADT is the town where Peter Henrich Henning, the first ancestor of the most Hennings in South Africa, was born

During the 13/14th centuries the descendants of these first Hennings spread over the areas today known as Germany, Denmark, Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Norway. All records from this time unfortunately were destroyed.

During the 17th and 18th Centuries several Hennings moved elsewhere — also to the new world. Today we find one of the biggest Henning clans in South Africa. However, we find Henning families in almost every civilised country in the Western world.

A few Henning descendants, however, remained in the vicinity of Stralsund and Greiffswald. It is known that Jacob Henning (the old) was born during 1635 at Demmin (near Stralsund and Greiffswald). Jacob Henning and his descendants became  known as the Henning Family of Karnin. Karnin is approximately 25 km from Stralsund. Jacob Henning and his descendants were big and wealthy property owners, who lived in a castle. This castle was confiscated during 1945, during the Second World War, by the communist government who took over Eastern Germany. Consequently this family spread over Western Germany.

The castle of the Henning family at Karnin



[i] Bahlow H.: “Deutches Namenlexikon”. Familien und Vornamen nach Ursprung und Sinn erklärt. München, 1977, p228