Italian diminutive of Anna or from Latin 'anellus' meaning 'little ring.'
Anella is a name of warm Mediterranean character, most closely associated with the Neapolitan and southern Italian tradition where it functions as a diminutive of Anna. Anna itself descends from the Hebrew Channah (Hannah), meaning "grace" or "favor" — and Anella carries that meaning forward with an added tenderness, the diminutive suffix softening the name into something intimate and affectionate. In Naples and the surrounding Campania region, it was used as a familiar, everyday form much as Annette was used in France or Annie in the Anglophone world.
The name carries traces of the Spanish influence that shaped southern Italian naming customs during the centuries of Aragonese and later Bourbon rule over the Kingdom of Naples. Forms like Anella and Anellina appear in Neapolitan dialect literature and folk songs, and the name features in the commedia tradition, where stock characters with such diminutive names often played quick-witted, resourceful young women. This theatrical association gave the name a certain vivacity that pure devotional forms of Anna sometimes lack.
In the twenty-first century, Anella is rare in both its Italian homeland and in English-speaking countries, which makes it genuinely distinctive. It benefits from the current taste for vintage Italian names — Giulia, Fiora, Calla — while being less expected than any of them. For parents seeking something with genuine southern European character, three clean syllables, and a softness that reads as neither fussy nor bland, Anella fills an appealing gap.