Re: " hurst" It is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning a wood or a wooded area. Near Seattle, where I live we have a community called Hurstwood but the people who named it that were obviously not etymologists.

—- Brian Costello

a community called Hurstwood but the people who named it that were obviously not etymologists

I’m sure they were property developers. This strange breed will invade a perfectly lovely area covered in oak trees, raze the entire neighborhood, and then proceed to build little box homes on streets named "Oak Drive", "Acorn Terrace" and "Shady Grove".  

- PW

Of course, if they’re building on a landfill where there never were any trees to begin with, they’ll use mildly Scotish terminology like Lost Glen or MacDuff Highlands instead.

Your point is well taken Palewriter. Best wishes!

—- Brian Costello

[quote author=Palewriter link=board=etymology;num=1061821017;start=15#17 date=01/27/04 at 21:21:57]

I’m sure they were property developers. This strange breed will invade a perfectly lovely area covered in oak trees, raze the entire neighborhood, and then proceed to build little box homes on streets named "Oak Drive", "Acorn Terrace" and "Shady Grove".  
. . .

PW,

I always preferred Mad Magazine‘s poem "Trees: A Builders Lament"  by Joyce Kilmore Trees to Joyce Kilmer’s original.  An excerpt:

I think that I will never see
A sight more sickening than a tree.

A tree that looks at God all day
While my God is the FHA.

. . .

Houses are built by fools like me,
And e’er I’m through, God help the tree!

That’s all I can remember of it after all these years.  

And I believe you have your own Hurst down in your neck of the woods:

Hurst

A city of northeast Texas, an industrial and residential suburb of Fort Worth. Population: 33,574.

in re: hurstwood, is it not also possible it was named after a person named hurst, who himself didn’t know the origin of his paterfamilias?

I find a lot of people never wondered where their names came from or what they might have derived from.