Recorded in a over fifty spellings including Rain, Raine, Rean and Reen (British), Rene, Renne, Rainon, Renon, and Reyne (France), Rein, Rehn, and Renn (Germany), Regina and Reina (Italy) and Reina (Spanish & Portugese), this most interesting surname has to be called "European". It has a number of possible origins. Firstly, it may derive from a shortened form of any of the various pre 7th century Germanic male given names with the first element "ragin", meaning counsel. These include Raymond and Reynold, meaning "counsel-rule" from "ragin" and "wald", rule. Secondly it may derive from the medieval female personal name Reine, itself Old French, but ultimately from the Roman (Latin) "regina", meaning queen. Thirdly it may be of Scottish locational origin from a place called Raine in the county of Aberdeenshire. This is named after the Old Gaelic "rath chain", meaning "the ford where the tax is paid". The surname is first recorded in Scotland in the late 12th Century, whilst other early examples taken at random throughout Europe include: Sir Thomas Rane of Irvine, Scotland in 1260, Alan Reyne of Cambridgeshire, England, in the same year, Counrad ze Rine of Basel, Switzerland in 1272, and Johannes Rayne of Yorkshire in the Poll Tax rolls of 1379. The first recorded spelling of the family name in any form anywhere in the world is believed to be that of Robert de Rane, which was dated 1180, in the "Episcopal Registers" of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. This was during the reign of King Malcolm 111 of Scotland, 1051 - 1093. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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