Family name origins & meanings
- Spanish : from Spanish clavel or Catalan clavell ‘clove’, earlier also ‘nail’, a derivative of Latin clavellus ‘nail’, applied as a metonymic occupational name for a spice trader or a nail maker.
- French : metonymic occupational name for a nail maker from a derivative of Latin clavellus, but in some cases possibly from the same word in the sense ‘smallpox’, ‘rash’.