Family name origins & meanings
- English : occupational name for a medieval court official, from Middle English bedele (Old English bydel, reinforced by Old French bedel). The word is of Germanic origin, and akin to Old English bēodan ‘to command’ and Old High German bodo ‘messenger’. In the Middle Ages a beadle in England and France was a junior official of a court of justice, responsible for acting as an usher in a court, carrying the mace in processions in front of a justice, delivering official notices, making proclamations (as a sort of town crier), and so on. By Shakespeare’s day a beadle was a sort of village constable, appointed by the parish to keep order.