hurst comes from Old English hyrst ('wooded hill, copse, eminence'), from Proto-Germanic *hurstiz ('thicket, brushwood'). Now chiefly survives in place-names. The history explains the modern form through the named earlier word or formation, without requiring a separate speculative ancestry. In present English, the noun sense is "a wooded hill or a small grove of trees", so the historical development ends in a clearly identifiable modern dictionary use. Its semantic neighborhood includes grove, copse, thicket, and wood, which helps locate the modern sense without adding a separate etymological claim. The named historical forms include Old English hyrst and Proto-Germanic *hurstiz.