Hen — From Old English to English | etymologist.ai
hen
/hɛn/·noun·c. 700 CE — attested in Old English glossaries and the Corpus Glossary (Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 144); henn appears in estate documents and ecclesiastical texts by the late 9th century·Established
Origin
Hen descends from Proto-Germanic *hanjō, feminine of *hanaz 'the singer', tracing through PIE *kan- (to sing) and showing Grimm's Law k→h shift; one of the most durable words in the Germanic farmstead lexicon, surviving the Norman Conquest intact.
Definition
The adult female of the domesticfowl (Gallus gallus domesticus), from Proto-Germanic *hanjō, itself from PIE *kan- ('to sing'), reflecting the bird's characteristic vocalisation.
The Full Story
Old Englishc. 700–1100 CEwell-attested
Old English henn denoted the female domestic fowl and descends from Proto-Germanic *hanjō, the feminine form of *hanaz (cock — literally 'the singer'). The underlying Proto-Germanic root traces to PIE *kan- (to sing), demonstrating Grimm's Law: voiceless velar stop PIE *k shifted to Germanic *h, giving the initial consonant of both henn and hana (cock). The semantic link is avian vocality — the cock was named as the archetypal singer, and the hen was his female counterpart. Old English hana (rooster) is
Did you know?
The rooster and hen were originally named from the act of singing: Proto-Indo-European *kan- gave Latin canere ('to sing') and Germanic *hanaz ('the singer' — the cock). Grimm's Law turned the PIE k into Germanic h, so where Latin kept canere, Germanic produced hana and hanjō. The hen is, etymologically, the female of the singer's kind — a namerooted in the cock's crow that divided night from day
. Archaeological evidence supports intensive poultry-keeping: excavations at Flixborough, Hamwic, and Lundenwic recovered chicken bones in domestic and monastic contexts from the 7th century onward. The Norman Conquest introduced Old French poule but failed to displace the native Germanic word — hen remained the standard English term throughout Middle English and into Modern English, demonstrating the resilience of core agricultural vocabulary. This survival mirrors that of cow, sheep, and swine, which kept their Germanic forms. Key roots: *kan- (Proto-Indo-European: "to sing, to make vocal sound"), *hanjō (Proto-Germanic: "hen, female singer — feminine form of *hanaz (cock)"), *hanaz (Proto-Germanic: "cock, rooster — literally 'the singer'").