[1] Baines has a number of different sources, several of them nicknames and another based on an occupation.
[1] The Middle English bayn, beyn and the Old Norse beinn meant 'straight' or 'direct', which may have become a nickname.
[1][2] At the time of the British Census of 1881, its relative frequency was highest in Rutland (31.2 times the British average), followed by Westmorland, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Leicestershire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Montgomeryshire and Bedfordshire.
[3] Hanks and Hodges suggest in their "A Dictionary of Surnames" that many present day Baines descend from Robert Baines of Ipswich, Suffolk, England (born c. 1587).
Other concentrations include, Swansea, (88th,1,704), City of Leeds, (167th,1,722), and West Yorkshire, (380th, 1,702).