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The beal Surname

beal Name Meaning and History

  1. English (of Norman origin): from Old French bel(e) ‘fair’, ‘lovely’ (see Beau), either a nickname for a handsome man or a metronymic from this word used as a female personal name.
  2. English: habitational name from places so named in Northumberland and West Yorkshire. The former of these (Behil in early records) comes from Old English beo ‘bee’ + hyll ‘hill’; the latter (Begale in Domesday Book) is from Old English beag ‘ring’, here probably used in the sense ‘river bend’, or an unattested personal name Beaga derived from this word + halh ‘nook’, ‘recess’.
  3. French (Béal): topographic name for someone who lived by a mill race, from the Lyonnaise dialect term béal, bezale, bedale (of Gaulish origin).
  4. Americanized spelling of German Biehl or Bühl (see Buehl).

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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The beal name in History

A unique volume of fascinating facts, statistics and commentary following the beal family name as far back in history as possible.

beal Family Facts

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Distribution of beal Families in the US in 1920
Number of beal families
 137-272
 46-136		 1-45
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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Year

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The information for this map came from Ancestry.com’s US Federal Census Collection.
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