From Latin 'ursa' meaning she-bear, with diminutive suffix; borne by the legendary Saint Ursula.
Ursula derives from the Latin ursa, meaning "bear," through the diminutive ursula — "little bear" — making it one of the few names in the Western canon that connects its bearer directly to one of the most powerful and symbolically loaded animals in human mythology. Bears appear in the oldest European folk traditions as figures of maternal ferocity, wilderness, and transformation, and the name Ursula carries those associations in its syllables whether its bearer knows it or not. The constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear, shares the same root.
The name's greatest medieval bearer was Saint Ursula, a legendary British princess said to have led eleven thousand virgins on a pilgrimage to Rome before being martyred by Huns at Cologne around the fourth century. The scale of the legend — eleven thousand virgins is almost certainly a medieval misreading of a much smaller number — suggests how potent the story became in European imagination. Ursula was venerated across the continent; the Ursuline order of Catholic nuns, founded in 1535, bears her name and educated generations of women across Europe and the Americas.
In Switzerland and Germany, the name remained in steady use for centuries. In the modern era, Ursula has been shaped by two very different cultural forces: Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the greatest science fiction and fantasy writers of the twentieth century, who gave the name an association with visionary imagination; and Ursula the Sea Witch from Disney's The Little Mermaid (1989), a magnificently theatrical villain who introduced the name to a generation of children. The result is a name at once formidable and warm, with a richness that rewards its bearers.