TERRY HALL

As a medieval given name this is a Norman form of the French name Thierry, from Germanic Theodoric, from þeud ‘people, race’ + rīc ‘power, ruler’. This was adopted by the Normans and introduced by them to Britain. In modern English use it seems at first to have been a transferred use of the surname derived from the medieval given name, and later to have been taken as a pet form of Terence.

English, Scottish, Irish, German, and Scandinavian: from Middle English hall (Old English heall), Middle High German halle, Old Norse hōll all meaning ‘hall’ (a spacious residence), hence a topographic name for someone who lived in or near a hall or an occupational name for a servant employed at a hall. In some cases it may be a habitational name from places named with this word, which in some parts of Germany and Austria in the Middle Ages also denoted a salt mine. The English name has been established in Ireland since the Middle Ages, and, according to MacLysaght, has become numerous in Ulster since the 17th century.