Hall in my family tree
Danish, English, German, Norwegian and Swedish: topographic name for someone who lived near a large house, or occupational name for someone employed at an hall or manor (Old English heall, Old High German halla , Old Norse holl). Some cases may be habitation names from towns named with this word, in particular Halle in Sachsen-Anhalt Germany.
Variants: English: Halls; Hallman. German: Halle, Haller; Hallmann, Halmann. Swedish: Hallén, Hallin, Hallman.
Cognates: Dutch: Hal, Van Hall, Van der Hall. French: Delahalle, Lahalle. Provençal: Alle.
Compounds (mostly ornamental): Swedish: Hallberg hall hill; Hallgren hall branch; Hallqvist hall twig; Hallström hall river.
Diminutives: French: Hallet, Halley, Hallez, Hallé.
Hall is one of the commonest and most widely distributed of English surnames, bearing witness to the importance of the hall as a feature of the medieval village.
John Hall (born 1584), an Englishman born in Kent who emigrated to New England in 1632, founded a notable American family, whose members have included Lyman Hall (1724 - 1790), politician and one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence, Asaph Hall (1829 - 1907), astronomer who discovered the two satellites of Mars, and Stanley Hall (1844 - 1924), pioneer in psychophysics.
Another John Hall emigrated to America in about 1652, settling in Massachusetts. His descendants include Charles M. Hall (1863 - 1914), who invented a process for the mass production of aluminium.
Hall or variants was the 18th most common name in England and Wales according to a survey taken by H.M.Treasury in 1944, with a relative frequency of 0.32%.
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