Gaines

Boy name variations

Family name origins & meanings

• English (of Norman origin) : nickname for a crafty or ingenious person, from a reduced form of Old French engaine ‘ingenuity’, ‘trickery’ (Latin ingenium ‘native wit’). The word was also used in a concrete sense of a stratagem or device, particularly a trap.
• This surname has also assimilated reduced variants of Welsh Gurganus.