Queripel Family History

Believed to be a nickname for a cantankerous or uncooperative person, it is apparently from a Norman French expression involving carrue ‘plough’ (noun or the stem of the verb; modern Guernsey French tchéruaï ‘to plough’) + pé (earlier pel) ‘fur’. The exact import of the expression ‘plough fur’ is not clear.

However, some sense of what it might mean is offered by the Jersey French expression touônner à r'bours-pé ‘to plough against the (nap of the) fur’, applied to mean ‘to plough the first furrow working in the opposite direction to what is needed for the rest of the task’.

The modern form of the Guernsey name with Qu- reflects a pronunciation with /k-/ derived from continuing use of the spelling in older documents.