DANA.  Unisex.  A variant form of Irish Danu (q.v.), the name of the goddess of the Tuatha de Danaan (tribe of Danu), or tribe of Sidhe (fairies).  Her name is probably from Celtic dana, meaning "bold, daring," also "a poet."  Usage: America, Australia, Canada, England, Ireland.
    f.  Dana Barron, an American actress.  Dana Gillespie, an English actress and singer.  Dana Rosemary Scallon, an Irish-American singer.
    m.  Dana Andrews (d. 1992), was an American actor.  Dana Murzyn, a former Canadian professional ice hockey league player. (Wiki)

DANA.  (Celtic.)  From Dana, bold, daring.  The chosen successor of a king, among the Celts, was so called; a poet. (An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names, Arthur, 1857).

    The Accadian god Anu would seem to be akin to the ancient Irish goddess Ana, referred to by Mr. W. M. Hennessy in the following passage quoted from his very interesting article on "The Ancient Irish Goddess of War" in the Revue Celtique:—"As mostly all the supernatural beings alluded to in Irish fairy lore are referred to the Tuatha de-Dauann, the older copies of the Lebor Gabhala, or 'Book of Occupation,' that preserved in the Book of Leinster for instance, specifies Badb, Macha, and Ana (from the latter of whom are named the mountains called da cich Anann, or the Paps, in Kerry), as the daughters of Ernmas, one of the chiefs of that mythical colony.  Badb ocus Macha ocus Anand, diatat cichi Anand il-Luachair, tri ingena Ernbais, na ban tuathige.  "Badb and Macha, and Anand, from whom the 'paps of Anann' in Luachair are [called], the daughters of Ernbas, the ban-tuathaig."  In an accompanying versification of the same statement the name of Anand or Ana, however, is changed to Morrigan... (The Celtic Magazine, Mackenzie, v.3, 1878). 

The people of the goddess Dana (Tuatha Dé Danann) or the Sidhe (pronounced Shee).
    The People of the god whose mother was called Dana, are the Tuatha De Danann of the ancient mythology of Ireland.  The Goddess Dana, called in the genitive Danand, in middle Irish times was named Brigit.  And this goddess Brigit of the pagan Celts has been supplanted by the Christian St. Brigit; and, in exactly the same way as the pagan cult once bestowed on the spirits in wells and fountains has been transferred to Christian saints, to whom the wells and fountains have been re-dedicated, so to St. Brigit as a national saint has been transferred the pagan cult rendered to her predecessor.  Thus even yet, as in the case of the minor divinities of their sacred fountains, the Irish people through their veneration for the good St. Brigit, render homage to the divine mother of the People who bear her name Dana,—who are the ever-living invisible Fairy-People of modern Ireland.  For when the Sons of Mil, the ancestors of the Irish people, came to Ireland they found the Tuatha De Danann in full possession of the country.  The Tuatha De Danann then retired before the invaders, without, however, giving up their sacred Island.  Assuming invisibility, with the power of at any time reappearing in a human-like form before the children of the Sons of Mil, the People of the Goddess Dana became and are the Fairy-Folk, the Sidhe of Irish mythology and romance.  Therefore it is that to-day Ireland contains two races,—a race visible which we call Celts, and a race invisible which we call Fairies.  Between these two races there is constant intercourse even now; for Irish seers say that they can behold the majestic, beautiful Sidhe, and according to them the Sidhe are a race quite distinct from our own, just as living and possibly more powerful.  These Sidhe (who are the "gentry" of the Ben Bulbin country and have kindred elsewhere in Ireland, Scotland and probably in most other countries as well, such as the invisible races of the Yosemite Valley) have been described more or less accurately by our peasant seer-witnesses from County Sligo and from North and East Ireland.  But there are other and probably more reliable seers in Ireland, men of greater education and greater psychical experience, who know and describe the Sidhe races as they really are, and who even sketch their likenesses.  And to such seer Celts as these, Death is a passport to the world of the Sidhe, a world where there is eternal youth and never-ending joy, as we shall learn when we study it as the Celtic Otherworld...
    In the Book of Leinster the poem of Eochaid records that the Tuatha De Danann, the conquerors of the Fir-Bolgs, were hosts of siabra; and siabra is an Old Irish word meaning fairies, sprites, or ghosts.  The word fairies is appropriate if restricted to mean fairies like the modern "gentry"; but the word ghosts is inappropriate, because our evidence shows that the only relation the Sidhe or real Fairies hold to ghosts is a superficial one, the Sidhe and ghosts being alike only in respect to invisibility.  In the two chief Irish MSS., the Book of the Dun Cow and the Book of Leinster, the Tuatha De Danann are described as "gods and not-gods"; and Sir John Rhys considers this an ancient formula comparable with the Sanskrit deva and adeva, but not with "poets (dée) and husbandmen (an dée)" as the author of Cóir Anmann learnedly guessed.  It is also said, in the Book of the Dun Cow, that wise men do not know the origin of the Tuatha De Danann, but that "it seems likely to them that they came from heaven, on account of their intelligence and for the excellence of their knowledge".  The hold of the Tuatha De Danann on the Irish mind and spirit was so strong that even Christian transcribers of texts could not deny their existence as a non-human race of intelligent beings inhabiting Ireland, even though they frequently misrepresented them by placing them on the level of evil demons, as the ending of the story of the Sick-Bed of Cuchulainn illustrates:—"So that this was a vision to Cuchulainn of being stricken by the people of the Sid: for the demoniac power was great before the faith; and such was its greatness that the demons used to fight bodily against mortals, and they used to show them delights and secrets of how they would be in immortality.  It was thus they used to be believed in.  So it is to such phantoms the ignorant apply the names of Side and Aes Side."  A passage in the Silva Gadelica (ii. 202-3) not only tends to confirm this last statement, but it also shows that the Irish people made a clear distinction between the god-race and our own:—In The Colloquy with the Ancients, as St. Patrick and Caeilte are talking with one another, "a lone woman robed in mantle of green, a smock of soft silk being next her skin, and on her forehead a glittering plate of yellow gold," came to them; and when Patrick asked from whence she came, she replied:  "Out of uaimh Chruachna, or 'the cave of Cruachan'."  Caeilte then asked:  "Woman, my soul who art thou?"  "I am Scothniamh or "Flower-lustre", daughter of the Daghda's son Bodhb derg."  Caeilte proceeded:  "And what started thee hither?"  "To require of thee my marriage-gift, because once upon a time thou promisedst me such."  And as they parleyed Patrick broke in with:  "It is a wonder to us how we see you two:  the girl young and invested with all comeliness; but thou Caeilte, a withered ancient, bent in the back and dingily grown grey."  "Which is no wonder at all," said Caeilte, "for no people of one generation or of one time are we:  she is of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who are unfading and whose duration is perennial; I am of the sons of Milesius, that are perishable and fade away."  The exact distinction is between Caeilte, a withered old ancient—in most ways to be regarded as a ghost called up that Patrick may question him about the past history of Ireland—and a fairy-woman who is one of the Sidhe or Tuatha De Danann...
    The Sidhe as War-Goddesses or the Badb.  It is in the form of birds that certain of the Tuatha De Danann appear as war-goddesses and directors of battle,—and we learn from one of our witnesses (p. 46) that the "gentry" or modern Sidhe-folk take sides even now in a great war, like that between Japan and Russia.  It is in their relation to the hero Cuchulainn that one can best study the People of the Goddess Dana in their role as controllers of human war.  In the greatest of the Irish epics, the Taín Bó Cuailnge; where Cuchulainn is under their influence, these war-goddesses are called Badb (or Bodb) which here seems to be a collective term for Neman, Macha, and Morrigu (or Morrigan)—each of whom exercises a particular supernatural power.  Neman appears as the confounder of armies, so that friendly bands, bereft of their senses by her, slaughter one another; Macha is a fury that riots and revels among the slain; while Morrigu, the greatest of the three, by her presence infuses superhuman valour into Cuchulainn, nerves him for the cast, and guides the course of his unerring spear. (The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, Evans-Wentz, 1911).