UNA SMITH

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: occupational name for a worker in metal, from Middle English smith (Old English smið, probably a derivative of smītan ‘to strike, hammer’). Metalworking was one of the earliest occupations for which specialist skills were required, and its importance ensured that this term and its equivalents were perhaps the most widespread of all occupational surnames in Europe. Medieval smiths were important not only in making horseshoes, plowshares, and other domestic articles, but above all for their skill in forging swords, other weapons, and armor. This is the most frequent of all American surnames; it has also absorbed, by assimilation and translation, cognates and equivalents from many other languages (for forms, see Hanks and Hodges 1988).