Description
EVERY NAME IS A STORY. This one belongs to everyone.
“Hall” is the house made into a name — from the Old English heall, “hall, manor house”: the dwelling that anchored the medieval village, the servant who kept its fires — and the honest fact that there is no single “Hall family.” From that foundation unfolds the sweeping story of America’s forty-fifth most common surname: Warin de Halla in the Pipe Rolls of Essex, 1178; the bearers of 1273 a century later; and the German saltworkers, Swedish rock-dwellers, and Chinese immigrants who folded their names into the American hall.
This stunning coffee-table volume traces the Hall name through eight richly illustrated chapters — the manor-house chain, the first records, the long road west, the farm boy who made aluminum cheap (Charles Martin Hall, the Oberlin woodshed and the cryolite breakthrough), real coats of arms with their storks’ heads and honest vendor warnings (and the truth about “family crests”), a prose gallery from G. Stanley Hall to Prince Hall, the counties and Arctic beaches that wear the name, and the census portrait: 407,076 bearers, ranked #45 in 2010 — down fifteen places from 2000, told straight.
Printed in an elegant 8.5″ × 11″ large format with clean white pages, dark ink, and gold accents — a museum-print look where every plate sits as a framed panel, Hall: A Surname History is the perfect gift for anyone who bears the name — and a beautiful addition to any library.
Find your name. Find your story.
Tamara Gribble is the creator of The Surname Histories. Hall is the fiftieth book in the series, behind Mitchell at #49.
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