URSULA BAILEY

From the Latin name Ursula, a diminutive of ursa ‘(she-)bear’. This was the name of a 4th-century saint martyred at Cologne with a number of companions, traditionally said to have been eleven thousand, but more probably just eleven, the exaggeration being due to a misreading of a diacritic mark in an early manuscript. This name was moderately popular in the 16th century, but its use in the English-speaking world today is selective. A more recent influence has been the film actress Ursula Andress (b. 1936 in Switzerland).

English: 1. status name for a steward or official, Middle English bail(l)i (Old French baillis, from Late Latin baiulivus, an adjectival derivative of baiulus ‘attendant’, ‘carrier’ ‘porter’). 2. topographic name for someone who lived by the outer wall of a castle, Middle English bail(l)y, baile ‘outer courtyard of a castle’, from Old French bail(le) ‘enclosure’, a derivative of bailer ‘to enclose’, a word of unknown origin. This term became a place name in its own right, denoting a district beside a fortification or wall, as in the case of the Old Bailey in London, which formed part of the early medieval outer wall of the city. 3. habitational name from Bailey in Lancashire, named with Old English beg ‘berry’ + lēah ‘woodland clearing’. 4. Anglicized form of French Bailly.