A female name. (French Anne, Annette, Nanette, German, Italian, &c., Anna, Spanish Aña, Anita). The usual Western form of the Hebrew Hannah ‘grace’ q.v. The name is not given to the mother of the Blessed Virgin in the New Testament but appears in various apocryphal gospels. Her cult did not take hold until the 14th C, and it was not until after the Council of Trent (1545) that the observance of her festival was imposed upon the Catholic Church. The name was a favourite in the Byzantine Empire, and was carried to Russia by the marriage in 988 of Anna, d. of Emperor Romanus, to Vladimir, Prince of Muscovy. Her g.d. Anna m. Henri I of France (1031-60) and so introduced the name into the West. It occurs first in England about the beginning of the 13th C (1218 is the earliest record), but it was rare until the beginning of the 14th C, when it began to come into more general use, perhaps partly owing to the influence of Anne of Bohemia, queen of Richard II. Its popularity grew steadily after the beginning of the 16th C, and by the beginning of the 17th C it was one of the commonest English names, a position it retained for at least two centuries. There was an early tendency to confuse it with Agnes (q.v.). Anna, the Latin form of the name, came into fashion in the 18th C. The early diminutives were Nan and Nanny, but they came in time to be used as a term for a loose woman and were replaced in the 18th C by Nancy. Nan has recently come into use again. In the 19th C the diminutive Annie was frequently used as an independent name. The French Annette, Nanette are occasionally used in England as independent names. The very common medieval Annot, which survives in Scotland and the North, was probably a diminutive not of Ann but of Agnes q.v. C. W. Bardsley, Dictionary of English and WelshSurnames (pub. 1901) remarks that one out of every ten Yorkshire girls was named Annot at a time when Anne or Anna is never found. The spellings Ann and Anne were used indifferently until recent times when spelling became more rigid. Anne, like Marie, was sometimes added to men’s names in France. Lord Anne Hamilton (1709-48) was named after his godmother, Queen Anne. In the 18th and 19th C it was often joined with Mary, and both Mary Anne and Anna Maria were common.

A Hebrew name, meaning: Grace.