UNA HALL

Anglicized form of Irish Úna. In Irish legend Úna is the mother of the hero Conn Cétchathach (Conn of the Hundred Battles). It was also the name of the beloved of the 17th-century poet Tomás Láidir Costello: banned by her parents from seeing him, Úna fell into a decline and died, leaving him to mourn her in his verse. The Anglicized form of the name is sometimes taken to be from the feminine of Latin unus ‘one’. It is the name used by Spenser for the lady of the Red Cross Knight in The Faerie Queene: he probably had Latin rather than Irish in mind, even though he worked in Ireland for a while. The Irish name has also been Anglicized as Unity, Juno, Winifred, and Agnes.

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.