Look up another surname
The cardinal Surname

cardinal Name Meaning and History

English, French, Spanish, and Dutch: from Middle English, Old French cardinal ‘cardinal’, the church dignitary (Latin cardinalis, originally an adjective meaning ‘crucial’). The surname may have denoted a servant who worked in a cardinal’s household, but was probably more often bestowed as a nickname on someone who habitually dressed in red or who had played the part of a cardinal in a pageant, or on one who acted in a lordly and patronizing manner, like a prince of the Church.

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
Learn the meaning and history of your first name
Share this page with friends and family

14–Day Free Trial

Download the Getting Started guide
It's FREE with registration!

cardinal Family Facts

Are you a Facebook user? Add cardinal family facts to your Facebook profile.
Distribution of cardinal Families in the US in 1920
Number of cardinal families
 41-80
 14-40
 1-13
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

Click on a state to view cardinal census records

Year

How is this helpful?

  • You can decide where (in which states) to start searching for cardinal records.
  • You can see how cardinal families moved over time by selecting different Census years.

What do I do next?

The information for this map came from Ancestry.com’s US Federal Census Collection.
  • Census records can tell you little-known facts about your ancestors such as birthplace, residence and occupation.
  • Click here to search cardinal census records.

Search for cardinal records

Name

Birth

+/-
e.g. Chicago, Illinois, USA

Death

+/-
e.g. Chicago, Illinois, USA
Give priority to    

More resources for your cardinal family history

Start your FREE family tree. Who will you discover?

A family tree is the easiest way to start discovering your family history. To begin, just enter whatever you know and we'll use that to try and find more information for you.

Begin your family tree with your name:

Learn more about family trees.

The cardinal name in History

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

Member Connections

More Tools and Resources