"Thou told'st me they were stolen unto this wood;
And here am I, and wode within this wood,
Because I cannot meet my Hermia."

(Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. 1.)

As a suffix -wood is sometimes a corruption of -ward, e.g. Haywood is
occasionally for Hayward, and Allwood, Elwood are for Aylward,
Anglo-Sax. AEthelweard. Another name for a wood was Holt, cognate
with Ger. Holz--

"But right so as thise holtes and thise hayis,
That han in winter dede ben and dreye,
Revesten hem in grene whan that May is."

(Troilus and Criseyde, iii. 351.)

Hurst or Hirst means a wooded hill (cf. Ger. Horst), and Shaw was once
almost as common a word as wood itself--

"Wher rydestow under this grene-wode shawe?"

(D, 1386.)

Hurst belongs especially to the south and west, though Hirst is very
common in Yorkshire; Shaw is found in the north and Holt in the east
and south. We have compounds of Shaw in Bradshaw, Crashaw (crow),
Hearnshaw (heron), Earnshaw (Mid. Eng, earn, eagle), Renshaw (raven)
[Footnote: It is obvious that this may also be for raven's haw
(Chapter XIII). Raven was a common personal name and is the first
element in Ramsbottom (Chapter XII), Ramsden.], etc., of Hurst in
Buckhurst (beech), Brockhurst (badger), and of Holt in Oakshott.

We have earlier forms of Grove in Greaves--

"And with his stremes dryeth in the greves
The silver dropes, hangynge on the leves"

(A. 1495)--

and Graves, the latter being thus no more funereal than Tombs, from
Thomas (cf. Timbs from Timothy). But Greaves and Graves may also be
variants of the official Grieves (Chapter XIX), or may come from Mid.
Eng. graefe, a trench, quarry. Compounds are Hargreave (hare),
Redgrave, Stangrave, the two latter probably referring to an
excavation. From Mid. Eng, strope, a small wood, appear to come
Strode and Stroud, compound Bulstrode, while Struthers is the cognate
strother, marsh, still in dialect use. Weald and wold, the cognates
of Ger. Wald, were applied rather to wild country in general than to
land covered with trees. They are probably connected with wild.

Similarly the Late Lat. foresta, whence our forest, means only what is
outside, Lat, foris, the town jurisdiction. From the Mid. Eng. waeld
we have the names Weld and Weale, the latter with the not uncommon
loss of final -d. Scroggs (Scand.) and Scrubbs suggest their meaning
of brushwood. Scroggins, from its form, is a patronymic, and probably
represents Scoggins w