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The fail Surname

fail Name Meaning and History

  1. Scottish: reduced form of McPhail. Black suggests that it may also be a habitational name from Fail in Ayrshire.
  2. Northern English (Scottish Borders): Reaney has it as a nickname from Old French faille ‘erring’ or ‘failure’, but a more probable source is the southern Scots dialect adjective fail, meaning ‘frail’ or ‘weak’.
  3. Altered spelling of French Faile.
  4. Altered spelling of German Föhl, Fehl, variants of Feil 2.

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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fail Family Facts

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Distribution of fail Families in the US in 1920
Number of fail families
 15-27
 6-14
 1-5
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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The fail name in History

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