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The brill Surname

brill Name Meaning and History

  1. English: habitational name from Brill in Buckinghamshire, named with the Celtic element bre- ‘hill’ + Old English hyll also ‘hill’.
  2. North German and Dutch: habitational name from any of various places in northwestern Germany and the Netherlands named Brill, from Middle Low German brul, bröil ‘wet lowland’. Compare German Bruehl.
  3. German: from Middle Low German brill ‘eyeglasses’, hence a metonymic occupational name for a maker of spectacles or perhaps a nickname for someone who wore them.
  4. Jewish (Ashkenazic): acronymic surname from Hebrew ben rabi ‘son of …’ and the first letter of each part of a Yiddish double male personal name, most likely Yude (Juda) Leyb. Many Ashkenazic family names beginning with Br- and Bar- are probably of acronymic origin, but without detailed evidence from family histories it is impossible to specify the personal name from which each is derived.

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

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

brill Family Facts

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Distribution of brill Families in the US in 1920
Number of brill families
 139-276
 47-138		 1-46
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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Year

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