lyn or linn (cognate with the Welsh word lyn/llyn, meaning lake.) This name may have come from a now drained piece of water that sat at or near the old parish church of St Andrews.

The name Golyn may also come from the Middle English work gol (meaning boundary or limit.) This could be because Golyn parish (the kirk being moved from Gullane to Dirleton in 1632 by an act of the Scottish Parliament) was one of the most northern parishes of Anglo-Saxon influence in Britain in early medieval times, as