Everall Family History

Post-medieval variant of Averill. Compare Walter Averell 1607, Nicholas Everell 1652, Jeoffry Everall 1675 in IGI (Beeston, Norfolk); Mary Everall 1665, Mary Averell 1682 in IGI (Saint Giles Cripplegate, London); Abraham Averell 1716, William Everill 1771 in IGI (Wolverhampton, Staffs).

Perhaps from the rare Middle English female personal name Everil(d), representing either Old English Eoforhild (from eofor ‘boar’ + hild ‘battle’) or an unrecorded Old French form of its Continental Germanic equivalent Eburhild. As a post-Conquest given name, it is apparently attested in a minor place-name Hevereldsshaghe 1439 in Place-Names of WR Yorks 3, p. 191, at Everill Shaw in Hebden Bridge.

The 1379 WR Yorks surname cited below, if derived from the personal name, is unlikely to have any link with the post-medieval Shrops and Staffs surnames cited under (1).

Perhaps a variant of Deverell, the initial D- being dropped as though it were a reduced form of the Anglo-Norman French preposition de ‘of/from’. However, Deverell and its variants are solidly SW England, especially Wilts, with no presence in Shrops or Staffs, where Everall and Everill are concentrated.