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The gale Surname

gale Name Meaning and History

  1. English: nickname for a cheerful or boisterous person, from Middle English ga(i)le ‘jovial’, ‘rowdy’, from Old English gal ‘light’, ‘pleasant’, ‘merry’, which was reinforced in Middle English by Old French gail. Compare Gail 2.
  2. English: from a Germanic personal name introduced into England from France by the Normans in the form Gal(on). Two originally distinct names have fallen together in this form: one was a short form of compound names with the first element gail ‘cheerful’, ‘joyous’. Compare Gaillard, the other was a byname from the element walh ‘stranger’, ‘foreigner’.
  3. English: metonymic occupational name for a jailer, topographic name for someone who lived near the local jail, or nickname for a jailbird, from Old Northern French gaiole ‘jail’ (Late Latin caveola, a diminutive of classical Latin cavea ‘cage’).
  4. Portuguese: from galé ‘galleon’, ‘war ship’, presumably a metonymic occupational name for a shipwright or a mariner.
  5. Slovenian: from a pet form of the personal name Gal (Latin Gallus), formed with the suffix -e, usually denoting a young person.

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

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

gale Family Facts

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Distribution of gale Families in the US in 1920
Number of gale families
 173-343
 58-172		 1-57
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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