Una

Una (f) An ancient and once common Irish name,
phonetically spelt as Oonagh or Oona. Uny is another Irish form, which perhaps explains why Winny, the pet
form of Winifred, was often used as a substitute for it.
Others took the name to be the same as Unity, one of
the Puritan abstract-quality names. Agnes was also thought to translate the name, in the belief that Una derived from Irish uan, ‘lamb’ and that Agnes also meant ‘lamb’ (‘lamb’ in Latin is agnus). The original meaning of the Irish Una is in fact unknown. It is not the same name as Spenser’s Una in the Faerie Queene(159o, 1596), where the Latin feminine of unus, ‘one’ is clearly the intended meaning. Una continues to be used to some extent in Scotland. There is a character bearing the name in Scott’s Waverley (1814).

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