English: topographic name for someone who lived in a (usually remote) nook or corner of land, from Old English and Middle English hale, dative of h(e)alh ‘nook, hollow’, or a habitational name from a place so named such as Hale in Cheshire, Hampshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Holme Hale (Norfolk), Hale Street (Kent), and Haile (Cumberland). In northern England the word often has a specialized meaning, denoting a piece of flat alluvial land by the side of a river, typically one deposited in a bend. See Haugh . In southeastern England it often referred to a patch of dry land in a fen. In some cases the surname may be a habitational name from any of several places in England named with this fossilized inflected form, which would originally have been preceded by a preposition, e.g. in the hale or at the hale. This surname is also established in south Wales.

Irish: shortened Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Céile (see McHale ).

Jewish (Ashkenazic): variant of Halle .