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Classification: Query
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/BKI.2ACIB/1.7.2.1
Message Board Post:
The Cavill line originated in Howden, East Yorkshire; the name originally being
"Cafeld" - meaning "Jackdaw field". The Normans changed the
"feld"(old English for "field') to "ville"(the French for
"place"); which changed the meaning to "Jackdaw place" - same thing,
different language, that's all.
Cavil( place name) is in the Domesday Book for East Yorkshire. Howden is/was the site of
Cavil(l) Hall(razed to the ground in the 1800's) which was like a small scale castle
with a moat; and the rebuilt Caville Hall(built over the filled-in moat) which was
demolished in the late 1950's to the early 1960's, due to subsidence. To-day,
Cavill(e) Hall Farm is owned and leased by the Norwich Union Insurance Company(since circa
1946) and the terraced row of farm workers' cottages are called "Cavill
Cottages" - about four in all, from memory.
Cavell may have had Norman origins, but it started in Cornwall; the coat-of-arms being
about 200 years younger that the Cavill coat-of-arms. Neither family has a direct,
right-of-claim descendant alive to-day; and has not for several hundred years. Cavell is
more common than Cavill in the south & south-west England.
Since none of us can claim direct line descent from the original surnamed Cavell or Cavill
family, I am of the strong opinion that we have all inherited a phonetic-cum-better known
or seen spelling of Cavill or Cavell; and that in fact, the two families are now one and
the same family.
My own line is/was Cavill; but, I have Cavell and many other variations of the spelling in
my line - back to phonetics etc.
ozcavill(a)smartchat.net.au