Seale
A habitational surname from places called Seale/Seal, originally meaning a hall, dwelling, or manor house.
The #5,905 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 52,813 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Seale is usually a locational surname from places named Seal or Seale in England. The place-name was explained in early surname dictionaries as coming from Old English and related Scandinavian forms meaning a seat, hall, residence, or manor house. In some sources the same element is linked to Old Norse sel and Old English sele, with the general sense of a dwelling-place or hall.
History
The surname appears in medieval and later records in several spelling forms, including Seal, Seale, and Sel. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century surname writers associated it especially with parishes in Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Leicester, and noted that it could be taken from any of several English places of the same name. The form Seals is also noted as a later variant in some families.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Old surname scholars sometimes connected Seale not with the modern word “seal,” but with an old word for a hall or residence.
From the historical record
“SEAL \ (Eng.) Bel. or Seal ; or Dweller at ot SEALE I by a Hall [O.E. sele, sal, a hall] fela ]>c6ra wses... j)e jiaet win-reced, gest-je/e gyredon, Cp. many of those were...”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)