Family name origins & meanings
- French, Catalan, and Spanish : nickname from civil, from Latin civilis ‘civil’, ‘of or pertaining to a citizen’, by extension ‘cultivated’, ‘educated’. However, in Spanish the term also meant ‘wicked’ or ‘rude’ and the nickname may have come from either of these senses.
- Catalan : topographic name from Old French sevil ‘fence’, ‘enclosure’.