Family name origins & meanings
- French (Normandy and Picardy) : from a dialect variant of Old French chape ‘hooded cloak’, ‘cape’, ‘hat’ (see Cape 2).
- probably a Castilianized form of Catalan Capell.
- Dutch : metonymic occupational name from Middle Dutch capeel ‘hood’, ‘headgear’.
- English : variant of Chappell ‘chapel’, from a Norman form with hard c-, applied as a topographic or occupational name, or as a habitational name for someone from any of several minor places named with this word, such as Capel in Surrey, Capel le Ferne in Kent, or Capel St. Andrew and Capel St. Mary in Suffolk.
- A bearer of this name from Normandy, France, with the secondary surname Desjardins, is documented in Varennes, Quebec, Canada, in 1696.