Engle
A surname that likely grew from the old name for the Angles, the Germanic people from whom the English took their name.
The #1,866 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 16,059 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Engle is usually explained as a form of the old ethnic name for the Angles, the Germanic people associated with early settlement in England. In Old English, Engle referred to the Angles; related scholarship also connects the name to continental place-names such as Angeln in northern Germany/Denmark. As a surname, it may have developed as a nickname or identifying name for someone thought to be Angle/English by origin, or through later spelling variation from related names such as Ingle.
History
The historical notes suggest that Engle sits in the same family of forms as Ingle and other names built on Ingel-/Engel-. In later English records, these forms were often blurred together by spelling variation, so the surname can be hard to separate cleanly from similar-looking names. The name also survives in broader historical language, since the Angles gave their name to England and to Anglo-Saxon in traditional scholarship.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The same old tribal name behind Engle is part of the word history of England itself.
From the historical record
“man] Engle and Seaxe ... Wedlas ofer c6mon. — 'Song 1 of Brunariburh' : A.-Sax. Chron., A.D. 937. Cecilia de Wales. —”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)Notable people named Engle
- Robert F. Engle (b. 1942)
Sourced from Wikidata; linked to their Wikipedia page.