fane

Etymology 1

From Middle English fane, from Old English fana (“cloth, banner”), from Proto-Germanic *fanô (“cloth, flag”), from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂n- (“to weave; something woven; cloth, fabric, tissue”). Compare vane.

noun

1. (obsolete) A weathercock, a weather vane.
   The ſteeple had become old and ruinous; and therefore the preſent one was built about the year 1740. It had, at that time, four fanes mounted on ſpires, on the four corners; theſe being judged too weak for the fanes, were taken down in 1764, and the roof of the ſteeple altered. 1801, John Baillie, An Impartial History of the Town and County of Newcastle Upon Tyne, page 541
2. (obsolete) A banner, especially a military banner.
   So fate fell-woven forward drave him,and with malice Mordred his mind hardened,saying that war was wisdom and waiting folly.‘Let their fanes be felled and their fast placesbare and broken, burned their havens,and isles immune from march of armsor Roman reign now reek to heavenin fires of vengeance! [I.18-25] c. 1935, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fall of Arthur, Harper Collins, London, published 2013, page 18

Etymology 2

From Middle English fane (“temple”), from Latin fanum (“temple, place dedicated to a deity”). Doublet of fanum.

noun

1. A temple or sacred place.
   Crown me, therefore,—and minstrelling near to thy fanes, Bacchus, thickly-adorned with rosy chaplets will I dance with a full-bosomed maid. 1830, Anacreon, “Ode V. On the Rose.”, in T. W. C. Edwards, transl., Τα του Ανακρεοντος του Τηιου Μελη = The Odes of Anacreon the Teian Bard, Literally Translated into English Prose;[…], London: […] [J. M‘Gowan and Son] for W. Simpkin and R. Marshall,[…], →OCLC, page 22
   Fanes are built around it for a distance of 3, 4 or 5 Indian miles; but whether these are Jaina, or more strictly Hindu is not mentioned. 1850, The Madras Journal of Literature and Science, volume 16, page 64
   The priests of the Germans and Britons were druids. They had their sacred oaken groves. Such were their steeple houses. Nature was to some extent a fane to them. 1884, Henry David Thoreau, Summer: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, page 78
   And this ideal conception is found beaming like a golden ray upon each idol, however coarse and grotesque, in the crowded galleries of the sombre fanes of India and other Mother lands of cults. 1888, H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1: Cosmogenesis, Quest Books 1993 page 458