Family name origins & meanings
- Italian (Calabria) : from Greek kephalē ‘head’, applied as a nickname, probably for someone whose head was of a distinctive shape or size. The word also denotes a kind of mullet, and may have been a metonymic occupational name for a fisherman.
- Italian (Calabria) : derogatory nickname meaning ‘idiot’, from medieval Latin cephalus, of the same etymology as 1.