Family name origins & meanings
- English (of Norman origin) : from Old French bel(e) ‘fair’, ‘lovely’ (see Beau), either a nickname for a handsome man or a metronymic from this word used as a female personal name.
- English : habitational name from places so named in Northumberland and West Yorkshire. The former of these (Behil in early records) comes from Old English bēo ‘bee’ + hyll ‘hill’; the latter (Begale in Domesday Book) is from Old English bēag ‘ring’, here probably used in the sense ‘river bend’, or an unattested personal name Bēaga derived from this word + halh ‘nook’, ‘recess’.
- French (Béal) : topographic name for someone who lived by a mill race, from the Lyonnaise dialect term béal, bezale, bedale (of Gaulish origin).
- Americanized spelling of German Biehl or Bühl (see Buehl).
- Lt. Col. Thomas Beal(e) (c.1621–c.1676) of London settled in York Co., VA, about 1650.