A female name. Una or Oonagh is an ancient Irish name, still in use, but often anglicized as Winnie or Winifred. Una is also sometimes used in England after Una in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, where it is the f. of Latin unus ‘one’ (in distinction to the false Duessa).

Originally Irish, it may, as Celtic, mean ‘famine’; it may even mean ‘born in famine’ (Swan): but, as Charlotte Yonge remarked more than half a century ago, this seems doubtful. Spenser was probably right, etymologically as well as semantically, when, in the Faery Queen, he made Una represent the one undivided Church, or the one truth (in contrast to Duessa or falsehood), for Latin unus, one, corresponds to Old Irish óen, and the w- pronunciation, originally dialectal, became general only ca. 1700 (Weekley).

A Gaelic female name, corrupted down from Winifred. Conf. Winny.

Latin (feminine) - One, expression of matchless perfection.

Latin (feminine) - the number one.

A Latin name, meaning: The one: expressive of perfection.

(m.) Remember.

Refers to the fact that a coyote is said to remember some food that he has buried somewhere and that he then gets.

Winifred, Winny, Irish Una; usually explained as from úna (núna, Middle Irish = gorta), hunger, famine, whence the Irish proverb: “Ní bhíon an teach a mbíon Una lá ná leath gan núna”—The house where Una is is never a day or half one without hunger.” Welsh newyn, Cornish naun, Br. naon, M. Breton naflin, *novengo-, English need. Cf. Early Irish uinchi, scarcity, English want, wane. Una, daughter of the King of Lochlan, is represented by Keating as Conn Cedcathach’s mother (second century).