Taxi & shuttle for Soignies to / from Brussels airport

Soignies (pronounced / swaɲiə /, in Dutch Zinnik, in Walloon Sougniye) is a French-speaking city in Belgium, located in the Walloon region, the capital of the district in the province of Hainaut. The city of Soignies is a thousand-year-old city founded in the 1977th century by Vincent Madelgaire (Saint Vincent). Since the merger of the municipalities in XNUMX, the Soignies entity has consisted of the villages of Horrues, Naast, Thieusies, Casteau, Neufvilles and Chaussée-Notre-Dame-Louvignies. Soignies is considered the European center for freestone.

Various hypotheses, considered today as fanciful, have been put forward in the centuries preceding the beginning of the XNUMXth century. They were formulated before the development of methodical toponymy as a branch of onomastics, itself based on the work of lexicographers and philologists, who used linguistics, and whose initiator in Belgium is Auguste Vincent.

In the 4th century, Jacques de Guyse and, after him, Jacques de Leussach dit Lessabé4 (1th century) asserted that Soignies owes its name to the stay that the Sénons made there under the leadership of Brennus, 2 centuries BC. J.-C. Note 5 This explanation is incompatible with ancient forms and based on unverified historical facts. In the XNUMXth century, the historian Pontus Heuterus claimed that it was necessary to bring Soignies closer to the people of Sègnes, who according to him, also gave their name to the Senne and the forest of Soignes. (The Sègnes were a small people from the Spa region) XNUMX. Jean de Petit, for his part, compares the name of the city to that of the Forêt de Soignes (in Brabant dialect: Sonie bosch), the root sounds would be a reference to the sun in Germanic mythologyXNUMX. In the XNUMXth century, Amé Demeuldre emphasizes that Soignies had been inhabited for centuries before Madelgaire founded his monastery there.

In Roman times, Sennona referred to the Senne and Sennonagus pagus, the land of the Senne6. For Demeuldre, the forms of Sougnies, in patois, and of Soignies have a Celtic origin: sunak (sun “sun”, ak “habitation”). These hypotheses, which are not based on knowledge of linguistics and onomastics, have now all been abandoned.

source: City of Soignies