Mena
A surname that can arise from several unrelated roots, including a place-name, a nickname, or a patronymic form in different languages.
The #1,832 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 15,815 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Mena is not a single, fixed surname origin: different families may have taken it independently in different language areas. In Spanish, it can be a habitational name from places called Mena, and the word itself is also found in older Spanish with meanings that are not always surname-related. In Welsh and Cornish sources, similar forms are tied to place-names built from local elements meaning things like a promontory or stone, while Dutch/Frisian scholarship notes forms like mena as part of older plural or family-group formations.
History
Because the form is short and widely reusable, Mena appears in several different surname traditions rather than one clear lineage. In modern usage it is especially common in the Spanish-speaking world and also occurs as a surname in the Americas through Spanish and other migrations. Older European scholarship also shows similar-looking names in Wales, Cornwall, and the Low Countries, but those are not necessarily the same family line.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The same four-letter surname can point to entirely different origins depending on the family: a place-name in one branch, a local nickname or older plural form in another.
From the historical record
“MENAI. Welsh. So called from Menem, a strait which di- vides the island of Anglesea from the coast of Wales. The Mena or Mona, worshiped by the Sequani, was the moon. The Gaels blessed the beams of this luminary that saved them from the danger of precipices, and Augustine says that the Gaelic peasants invoked Mena…”
— An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names