Happy Hill
Happy Hill # CUP TVX R NO378145 1
Hippehill 1519 x 1521 RMS iii no. 196 [lands of *Little Tarvit commonly called Happy Hill; see p. 265, above, for more details]
Hyppe Hill 1534 Laing Chrs. no. 394 [the lands of Little Tarvit (Little Teruate) or Happy Hill; instrument of sasine proceeding on a precept of Friar Alexander Campbell, Dominican prior of St Andrews]
Hippehill 1543 St Andrews Calendar no. 293 [the lands of Little Tarvit (Litill Terwat) commonly called Happy Hill]
the Hippehill 1600 PSAS 47, 199 [citing an Instrument of Sasine, 18 July 1600: ‘the lands of Lytill Tervet called the Hippehill’]
Happy Hill 1820 Wood/Cupar
? + Sc hill
The specific (first) element may contain Sc hip ‘hip’; also topographically ‘a projecting or outlying piece of land’ (see DOST under hip). From the early forms, and from the fact that it became re-analysed as Sc or SSE happy, it would seem always to have ended in an unstressed syllable, perhaps representing an otherwise unrecorded adjective *hippie meaning ‘hip-shaped’.
It is shown on Wood’s Map (1820) at the above NGR, and is now probably cut through by the railway line. It was an alternative name for Little Tarvit, some or all of which was temple land (see Tarvit CUP, TVX, below).
This place-name appeared in printed volume 4