WADE HALL

Transferred use of the surname, in origin either a local name from the medieval vocabulary word wade ‘ford’ (old English (ge)wæd), or else from a medieval given name representing a survival of Old English Wada, a derivative of wadan ‘to go’, borne, according to legend, by a great sea-giant.

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.