Club Secretary, Frank Heaven, was informed that the patch of land that the Albion were busily converting into a football ground on the Birmingham Road had once been the site of an estate called The Hawthorns, as it had once been bordered with a hawthorn hedge.
Heaven told the board of directors that the name should be reintroduced for the as yet unnamed ground.
Records suggest “there was some mirth” when the name was first suggested, but it was quickly adopted and remains the somewhat poetic name of the stadium to this day.