From the legendary Norse smith Völundr (Wayland the Smith); also means 'land by the path.'
Wayland is an Old English name of deep mythological resonance, derived from the legendary smith Wēland — the Anglo-Saxon form of the Old Norse Völundr and the Old High German Wieland. Weland the Smith is one of the oldest and most widely attested figures in Germanic mythology, a master craftsman of supernatural skill who appears in the Old English poem "Deor," in the Norse "Völundarkviða" of the Poetic Edda, and in references scattered across Frankish, German, and Scandinavian literature. His story follows a tragic arc: captured and hamstrung by a jealous king, Weland exacts a terrible revenge through craft and cunning before escaping on wings he forged himself.
He is the archetypal artist-exile — creative power as simultaneously gift and curse. The name is embedded in the English landscape through Wayland's Smithy, a Neolithic long barrow on the Oxfordshire Ridgeway that English folklore long associated with the invisible smith who would reshoe your horse overnight if you left a coin. Walter Scott invoked this tradition in "Kenilworth" (1821), and the site has continued to draw writers and walkers fascinated by the layering of prehistoric structure and medieval legend.
The place-name evidence confirms how thoroughly Weland penetrated early English imagination: wherever his name attached to landscape, it stayed. As a given name, Wayland has never been common, but it has persisted steadily in regions of English and American use — particularly in the American South and Midwest — as a surname transferred to first-name use honoring family heritage. It conveys an old-world artisanal strength and mythological depth that more common names cannot match. The nickname Way gives it an unexpected modernity, and the full name carries a quiet epic quality that wears well.